Long before fur trappers entered the Bighorn Valley, Crows, Sioux, and Cheyennes competed for the area’s abundant game. In 1876, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors defeated the U.S. Army at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and the next year the Army established Fort Custer just across the river. After the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad laid tracks into the Crow Indian Reservation in 1894, the tribe faced heavy pressure to open the reservation to homesteaders. In 1904, in its last and smallest land cession, the Crows gave up territory south of the Yellowstone River. Anticipating a rush of settlers, the Lincoln Land Company platted Hardin in 1907. Owned by the same men who owned the railroad, the company founded about three hundred towns across the West and gave Hardin a variation of its T-town plat, with Center Street forming a T with the tracks. Forty men came from Billings to bid when the town lots went on sale, and Edwin Spencer bought the first lot for $900, where he built a general store and post office. In the 1910s, restrained, symmetrical architecture and solid brick business blocks, some designed by Billings architects, came to dominate Hardin’s commercial district. After World War I, low commodity prices slowed growth at this agricultural shipping point, but Hardin continued to serve as the Big Horn county seat, a role represented by its 1937 Moderne style courthouse.