Crossing the Plains With Custer

A companion volume to the popular book "Exploring with Custer: The 1874 Black Hills Expedition", the all-new "Crossing the Plains with Custer" tells the rest of the story of this historic Expedition led by Gen. George Armstrong Custer, two years before his fateful encounter at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Many of the Indian scouts who accompanied this Expedition were familiar with the high plains between Fort Lincoln and the Black Hills, but the only available maps contained large gaps or inaccuracies. The Expedition would not only begin to change that, it would have far-reaching historical consequences as well. The Black Hills gold rush that followed was a contributing cause of the Little Big Horn battle, reverberating through the years to Wounded Knee and beyond. The pivotal events of that summer were part of perhaps the best-documented military expedition of the Old West. Photographer William Illingworth captured images of great quality and clarity, while at least fifteen men were recording vivid accounts in their diaries, reports and newspaper dispatches. These elements are woven together here much as they were in the companion volume "Exploring with Custer" to form a narrative of day-to-day life on the trail. The earlier book told the story of exploring the Black Hills; here the focus is on the plains portion of the journey, much of which can still be followed across a vast and varied landscape. Beautiful landscape photographs illuminate Custer's 665-mile plains trail, revealing places where the explorers visited or where the wagon train passed. GPS coordinates mark many public crossings of the route between Fort Lincoln and the Black Hills. A special section features dozens of artifacts from several private and public collections. This book is 8.5x11 inches in size, 336 pages, with more than 200 full-color photographs as well as maps of Custer's route across the Dakotas.