Ed E.
Yelp
For a history buff like me, visiting Ft. Abraham Lincoln was a real treat.
This was the last post of the Seventh Cavalry before it rode out with General George Armstrong Custer to meet immortality at the Little Big Horn River in Montana.
The park shows the foundations of the officer's houses lined up along the parade ground. The Custer house has been reconstructed and is furnished with period antiques, some of which came from the Custer family. It is a surprisingly large house with 12 foot ceilings on both the first and second floors. Visitors can see where Custer entertained his fellow officers, visit the kitchen, the servants' bedrooms, the family's bedrooms and Custer's office.
Across the 150 yard wide parade ground -- a grassy flat area -- is a reproduction of the enlisted men's quarters. There are two wings that extended off a central kitchen/mess hall/company office. Both wings are set up with beds, trunks, rifle racks, stoves, etc. In one wing, the trunk at the foot of each bed is propped open and a sign identifies the name the soldier who might have lived there and a short biography of him. Most were about 5'6" to 5'8" in height and Irish. Some did not die fighting the Sioux at the Little Big Horn and the biographies tell about what they were doing on that fateful day in 1876.
To visit a piece of national myth and legend or even camp over night, stop by Ft. Abraham Lincoln just outside of Mandan, ND.
