Exploring With Custer The 1874 Black Hills Expedition

On the border between Wyoming and South Dakota, the Black Hills were still a mysterious place to the white world long after the West was settled.Gen. George Armstrong Custer's Black Hills Expedition of 1874 changed everything. It sparked the last great gold rush in the continental U.S., giving birth to Deadwood but also violating the Fort Laramie Treaty with the Sioux. Their rage was unleashed on Custer and his Seventh Cavalry just two years later at the Little Big Horn.This significant and eventful expedition was also one of the best-documented in the Old West. At least ten of the explorers kept journals or filed reports. Five journalists wrote stories full of picturesque detail. And photographer W.H. Illingworth recorded dozens of fascinating and invaluable images."Exploring with Custer: The 1874 Black Hills Expedition" brings all these sources together for the first time in a book that allows you to relive the adventure. All of the Illingworth photos are included, along with modern matching photographs taken at nearly 50 sites in the Black Hills. The other half of the book weaves together the first-person accounts for an exciting day-by-day chronicle of events in the Black Hills. Maps reveal the precise route of the expedition - including camps, photo sites and other points of interest - with detailed directions (and GPS readings) for anyone who wants to follow the trail in person.