This date in 1874 is credited as being the day Custer’s Black Hills Expedition discovered gold. But skeptics disagreed.

George Armstrong Custer and one of the many dogs he owned during his lifetime.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum climbs the face of Mount Rushmore in 1923.

On June 26, 1862, Confederates called it the Battle of Mechanicsville. The Union named it Beaver Creek Dam. Same fight, different name.

Illustrator Thomas Nast lashes out at Congressional Democrats in his lastest work, ‘The New Alliance,’ in Harper’s Weekly.

Chief Sitting Bull gets his first taste of cannon fire at Killdeer Mountains near present-day Theordore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota.

A tourist in 1910 pans for gold along French Creek in the Black HIlls, where gold was discovered by miners accompanying Custer in 1874.

A 14-foot granite obelisk, a memory to the US cavalrymen killed at Little Bighorn, is erected on Las Stand Hill in July 1881.

The New York Herald raised contributions in July 1876 for a memorial to slain military leader George Armstrong Custer.

‘American Progress’ by George A. Crofutt (1873) shows an allegorical female figure of America leading pioneers westward.

Lt. Colonel George A. Custer of the 7th Cavalry Regiment in his study at Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory

George Custer and the 7th Cavalry enter the Black Hills in Dakota Territory on July 22, 1874.

Union and Confederate troops clashed at Battle of Bull Run in Virginia on July 21, 1861.

Lakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army at Fort Buford in Dakota Territory.

W.M. Cary depicts George Custer’s fight at Last Stand Hill in his illustration, “The Death Struggle of General Custer” (1876).

Grave marker “Custer”

U.S. Army scout William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody killed Cheyenne warrior Yellow Hair on July 17, 1867 in northwest Nebraska.

George Custer’s widow, Elizabeth “Libbie”, sat down for an interview with a reporter from the Spokane Falls Review for a story published on July 16, 1890.

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock was Lt. Col. George Custer’s superior officer when Custer left his post at Fort Wallace, Kansas on July 15, 1867, in pursuit of his wife, Libbie.

Author Chris Wimmer weaves facts and interesting anecdotes about some of the West’s wildest characters in the book, “The Summer of 1876.”