Advertisement
Published: September 11th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Missouri River Sunrise
Missouri River Sunrise from Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park. Posted By: Onaxthiel: I beat Obfuscator out of the bivy by about 45 minutes. It gave me some time to play with his camera and get a few shots of the Missouri river sunrise at fort Abraham Lincoln. I also was able to help a young woman from Virginian help pack up her gear. She is road tripping as well, but on a far more condensed time line than we are. College in Washington, or some such. We then had our opportunity to explore F.A.L. and a site called On-A-Slant-Village, a site inhabited by the Mandan Indians a few years prior to the Lewis and Clark expedition. They abandoned it due to a smallpox outbreak, and left a prime piece of real estate for the army to occupy. River on one side, a deep (and deepened by the Mandan) ravine on a second side, and a hard to assail butte on the third side of the triangle made up the natural defenses of the town, and later the infantry fort. Arriving promptly at nine for the first tour we found a wonderfully reconstructed set of earth lodges and drying racks, along with a palisade and a very well informed and enthusiastic
On-A-Slant Village
The village really is built on a slant. tour guide, who we commenced to put through our standard barrage of questions until we ran out of time and he had to get back to start the next tour. The site reminded me of a site in south eastern Wisconsin called Aztalan, but that is a tale for another day.
On the hill overlooking the village is the old infantry F.A.L.. Three stockades with exceptional views of the surrounding countryside make up most of the reconstruction on the old site. You can see why the infantry would want this location as it’s headquarters, being defensible and near a fork in the river. The stockades and two outlying observation posts rounded out the forts original defenses, and the post cemetery rounded out the reconstructions. Besides the disease that I have always heard made up most non-battlefield injury in the era prior to antibiotics , I also noticed a number of graves marked as gunshot wounds. It turns out that in the old days, the infantry would go into town on the weekends and start trouble with the locals. The army really never changes. Being that this was the old west, sometimes they got shot. I think the locals in
View of the Missouri
View of the Missouri from Fort Abraham Lincoln. Bismarck may have gotten more confirmed kills off the infantry stationed at FAL than the Indians got. Then it was down to the cavalry post portion of FAL. It is built on the banks of the Missouri, and nestled in between the same hills that the infantry post is built on. I guess that the Cav wasn’t as worried about terrain as the grunts. While much has been rebuilt at the cavalry post, the most impressive parts were the CO’s house and the barracks. Custer lived in a home that was impressive by any standard, and I would suspect outright opulent by the standards of the era and location. On the other hand, Commanding officers homes at posts the world over are always near-mansions. The state of N. Dakota has obtained some of the Custer families personal effects, some of the forts old furniture, and gone to great lengths to get facsimiles of what they think were in the rooms where they couldn’t be exact.
The enlisted Barracks were also quite impressive. Familiar to anyone with military experience, the squad bays and foot lockers have only evolved, not really gone away. In one wing, the foot lockers of all
The Eye of Sauron
The Eye of Sauron is inescapable, even inside Fort Abraham Lincoln's Infantry Post. the soldiers had a short excerpt about what was known about the soldier who’s rack was represented. Where they were from, whether they died at little bighorn, where they were during the fight if not killed, and what they did in life after the seventh cavalry for the survivors. The other wing had the footlockers filled with the sort of things one would find in a soldiers foot locker of the era. Letters to and from home, spare clothes, books, porn, booze and cards. A very worthwhile stop. Perhaps the most interesting artifact is hiding in the gift shop in a dark corner. LTC Custer’s map case from little bighorn was the only one of his personal items ever returned to Libby Custer. And it sits unnoticed next to a display of replica rifles for sale.
We drove on to look for Sitting Bull’s grave near Fort Yates, but were unable to locate it. Shades of searching for my ARITS, but one would think Sitting Bull’s grave would be better marked. We proceeded on to Lemmon, SD, one of those towns the world forgot about when the highway diverted around it. In the case of Lemmon, it not only
Custer's Sitting Room
Custer's Sitting Room. 2 Fireplaces! Swanky. bypassed the town, but a truly unique attraction the town has. The Petrified Park (approx. 45° 56.332 N, 102° 09.496W) wasn’t a petrified forest in the way that the national park is. It was a work of art and a labor of love. The old highway used to run through an alley of trees, rocks, shrubberies, dinning areas, a small castle, gas station, and even a museum all made of petrified wood. Since the road no longer runs through this area, the locals filled the open space with a few more pieces of sculpture and one huge water fountain. The museum was mostly local history, blended with some other random oddities, in what Obfuscator terms “the shotgun approach to history.” But a neat place for all that. We stopped in a local bar/ restaurant for a meal of steak, soup and salad before heading off to our camp for the night. On the way out we saw….ANOTHER MECHANOSAUR! It’s not only the people of Minnesota that memorialize the loss of these great beasts. Our camp site for the night was near a river, fairly nice, and really cold. We went to bed a bit earlier than usual, but not before
Exterior of Custer's House
Exterior of Custer's House. realizing that we were down wind of the latrines. Oh well.
Lessons learned: Keep smaller bills available for paying for camping sites. We had to pay a ten dollar fee, plus a three dollar entry fee to camp for the night. So to get the change to do self-registration at the camp, we had to go buy some toothpaste we didn’t really need with a 20 and get change. Next time we should just make sure we have some smaller bills. Make sure you get out of the car and scent the air before selecting the place to camp for the night, you might be down wind of something unpleasant. Make sure that even in the car camping mode, not just the backpacking mode, that warm clothes are kept handy. I had to dig into my gear pretty deeply to get to long pants and a sweat shirt. Lastly, because I think it should be noted and have nowhere else to list it, I really like the people of the Dakotas. About 1/3 of the people you see wave at you when they drive past you or you past them, for no apparent reason, except that you are a fellow
Barracks
Onaxthiel had to be restrained from jumping right into a rack, he felt so at home. human being. And they are always smiling when they do it. Their gas prices are too high though.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.296s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 20; qc: 96; dbt: 0.1811s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
allen
non-member comment
gas
gas prices are high everywhere, right now. :P