We had been wanting to go to Fort Abraham Lincoln all summer, but for reasons since forgotten we never did until today, Sunday. It was the short tour, the one where we drove to the top of the hill to where the infantry post was located and climbed the ladders inside the blockhouses to their observation decks. The Missouri and the confluence of the Heart River flow far below this vantage point. One looks out over the flat plain below and to the cavalry post positioned on it and sees how accessible water was for the needs of the large herd of horses kept as mounts.
Standing atop the blockhouses I thought of the history associated with this site. Only recently I learned how harsh life would have been for the infantry. About 160 of them marched from here on foot, of course, as guards for the slow moving wagon train accompanying the 7th Cavalry as they headed for the Little Big Horn. Harsher yet was the suffering of the seventy or so cavalrymen who had no horses to ride. Their riding boots caused blisters and sore feet to form as they walked along.
Three riders brought their horses from Steele to ride the grounds and hills of the park's acreage. They asked us to take pictures of them with their cameras, and I just happened to have mine along to snap one for myself.
Mary thought this scene of a blockhouse with the state capitol building in the background to be picture worthy. The old and the new? No one standing lookout at the fort could ever have envisioned this modern building standing tall against the sky. What they would have seen would have been the old Edwinton with a small cluster of bars, whorehouses, and dwellings.
Here is my darling wife. I was so proud of her since she climbed the ladders to the top, too. A few years ago she would not do it, but today I suppose she did not want me to have all the fun. The river bed from this point appears desolate now with all the drowned, dead brush, the layer of silt covering the area, and the newly deposited, shapeless sandbars rising above the water.
