Guided to Hiddenwood Cliff by Sioux and Arikara scouts, General George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry camped at this famed buffalo hunting spot on July 8, 1874, while the Custer Expedition was on its way to the Black Hills in South Dakota. The camp spread across a broad area with 2,000 men, 1,000 cavalry horses, 900 mules, 300 beef cattle, and 150 wagons. Custer and 10 companies of the 7th Cavalry had left Fort Abraham Lincoln near present-day Bismarck on July 2, 1874, under orders to explore the Black Hills territory and locate a potential fort site on the western side. Unofficially, the expedition also sought to confirm or deny rumored gold in the Black Hills, then part of the Great Sioux Reservation. At Hiddenwood, a reporter portrayed an evening after a twenty-mile march in a place called Pahachechacha, or Hidden Wood, valued as the only timber within thirty miles, where clustered hills concealed the trees from view two miles away and where a sunset, a jagged bluff with trees, a clear stream, tents, wagons, grazing horses, and a band at the camp's center formed a striking scene.