Fort Meade: After the Little Bighorn

Two years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the United States Army needed a permanent presence in the northern Black Hills to protect the gold rush settlements around Deadwood and to manage the aftermath of the war that had killed George Armstrong Custer. Fort Meade was established in eighteen seventy-eight with troops from Custer's own Seventh Cavalry among the first garrison.

The post cemetery was founded in the post's early years. Over the following decades, Fort Meade also housed Buffalo Soldiers, including the Twenty-Fifth Infantry, and the Fourth Cavalry, which made the transition here from horses to mechanized vehicles. The fort remained active through both world wars and the Cold War. Its original buildings, many still standing near present-day Sturgis, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Old Fort Meade Museum preserves the story of a post born directly from one of the most consequential battles in the history of the American West.