The Little Missouri Badlands played a key strategic role in the conflict between American Indians and the expanding United States. General Alfred Sully in 1864 led the first military expedition to cross the badlands. The expedition of 2,200 men and a large civilian wagon train entered the badlands from the east on August 6, fresh from a decisive victory on July 28 over the Sioux Indians at Killdeer Mountains. Sully despaired of finding a route across the rugged terrain, but followed the guidance of a young Indian scout and successfully blazed a trail several miles south of present-day Medora. Sully’s command emerged from the badlands on August 9, after skirmishes with the Sioux, known as the Battle of the Badlands. Military expeditions in 1871, 1872 and 1873 provided protection for railroad survey crews. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh U.S. Cavalry were part of the 1873 escort. Custer and his regiment passed through the area in 1876 on the way to defeat at the Little Bighorn River in Montana. The Custer Trail is now identified and marked for posterity. Later in 1876, General George Crook passed through from the west, before turning south toward the Black Hills in a desperate march for supplies. The U.S. Military established a presence in 1879 with the construction of the Bad Lands Cantonment at the Northern Pacific railroad crossing on the west side of the Little Missouri River, west of present-day Medora. The cantonment was abandoned in early 1883, by which time the Indian threat had ended.
