The Cheyenne River drainage system has been the locus of human activity for thousands of years. Native Americans used the corridor in search of wild game and wild plant resources. When gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1875, miners, gamblers, freighters, and road agents followed the Cheyenne-Deadwood road through this area, while stagecoaches carried gold to the railroads in Cheyenne and brought passengers back. Robber's Roost, a creek crossing a few miles north of Mule Creek Junction, was a favorite spot for holdups. General George Crook and his men camped nearby on the Cheyenne River in June 1876 during the Powder River Campaign while Custer fought on the Little Big Horn. In the 1870s and 80s, thousands of cattle arrived, later followed by thousands of sheep, most of them trailed from Cheyenne, and ranches were built up in the late 1870s and 1880s, with a few remaining in the same family today. The Cheyenne River and its tributaries have provided water for pioneers, livestock, wildlife, and the irrigation of alfalfa fields. Today most of the sheep are gone, longhorn cattle have been replaced by Herefords and later mostly Angus cattle, calves are moved from these prairies in the fall to become beef for this nation and the world, and hunters come from throughout America to harvest pronghorn antelope and mule deer made abundant by ranchers' development of water and pasture.