The strategic importance of the Black Hills was recognized as early as 1857, when First Lieutenant Warren climbed Bear Butte during a military survey on September 30 and judged it a proper place for the army to gather a force to protect the region. Fort Meade was established in the summer of 1878 when members of the reorganized 7th Cavalry came from Fort Abraham Lincoln near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, after local pleas and congressional desire to protect the Black Hills gold territory were finally answered. In July 1878, General Phil Sheridan visited the area, reached the same conclusion Warren had reached twenty-one years earlier, and from a hill overlooking the present site indicated where he wanted each of the fort's buildings erected. Fort Meade remained a military installation for 66 years, longer than any other frontier fort in the region, and its mission of preserving peace in the area earned it the title "The Peace Keeping Post." It saw little fighting but had lasting significance in other ways: Comanche, the only survivor among the men and horses with Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn, lived there as the pampered pet of the 7th Cavalry and by order of Colonel Sturgis was never ridden again; in 1892 Colonel Caleb Carlton and his wife Sadie chose "The Star Spangled Banner" to be played every evening at military retreat ceremony, helping begin a movement that culminated in 1931 when Congress made it the national anthem of the United States; during the Great Depression it housed Civilian Conservation Corps camps directing work throughout the Black Hills; in 1934 and 1935 its troopers aided the launch of the Explorer I and Explorer II balloons, and Explorer II set a manned altitude record of 72,395 feet that stood for twenty-two years; its troopers guarded President Calvin Coolidge during the summer of 1927 when the Summer White House was in Custer State Park and later protected President Franklin Roosevelt during the dedication of the Thomas Jefferson carving on Mount Rushmore; during World War II glider and infantry troops trained there for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, it housed a prisoner of war camp, and in 1942 it became fully mechanized after saying goodbye to its horse mounts. Today the site continues serving military needs as a VA Hospital and training site for the South Dakota National Guard, while Fort Meade National Cemetery remains the burial place of nearly 200 men, women, and children, and Black Hills National Cemetery lies on the southern edge of the old fort's military reservation.