Custer loses again at Little Bighorn in Montana

Sunset, May, 1992 by R. Valentine Atkinson

In May, this grassy knob in Montana is usually washed by rain, sun, and the season's first wave of tourists. Nearly 116 years have passed since Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer led the Seventh Cavalry to defeat and into history here. Yet the battle still grips us--last year 295,000 visitors flocked to this remote plain 65 miles southeast of Billings.

Formerly known as Custer Battlefield National Monument, it had been one of few such battlefields named for a person rather than a site. In December 1991, President George Bush signed a bill changing its name to Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and allowing for a monument to the Native Americans who also died. The marker being planned may rise here on Last Stand Hill, near the headstones noting where historians believe Custer and some of his men fell on June 25, 1876.