Exploring Big Horn Canyon:
In North America people have traveled and made their living along rivers and streams for more than 40,000 years. But the Big Horn River was too treacherous and too steep-walled. People here lived near the Bighorn but avoided navigating it--until the dam tamed the river.
The broken land here also challenged the ingenuity of early residents forcing them to devise unusual strategies of survival. The many caves of the Bighorn area provided seasonal shelters and storage areas for the Indians as well as for the early traders and trappers.
Absaroke means “People of the large-beaked bird in the Siouan language of the Crow. Their reservation surrounds most of the Bighorn Canyon. Originally a farming people the Crow split off from the Hidatsa tribe more than 200 years ago. They became a renowned hunting people, described by one of the Lewis and Clark Expedition as the “finest horse-men in the world.” 
After the 1900 explorers, traders and trappers found their way up the Bighorn River, Charles Larocque met the Crow at the mouth of the Bighorn in 1805. Captain William Clark traveled through a year later. Jim Bridger claimed he had floated through the canyon on a raft. Later fur traders packed their good OVERLAND on the Bad pass Trail, avoiding the river’s dangers.
During the Civil War, the Bozeman Trail led to mines in western Montana by crossing the BigHorn River. Open from 1864 to 1868, the trail was bitterly opposed by the Sioux and the Cheyenene; the Crow were neutral. The Federal Government closed the trail in 1868 after the Fort Laramie Treaty. Fort CF Smith, n
ow on private land guarded the trail as an outpost.
Congress established Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area in 1966 as part of the National Park System to provide enjoyment for visitors today and to protect the park for future generations.
See information and maps: page 1&2 and page 3&4
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