“Cottonwood Creek Roadside Park”

You’re in cow country now mister. If you had a cow for every brand that run critters on Cottonwood Creek, Midas would turn green with envy. White men first hit this range in 1825 when the Ft. Tecumseh (Ft. Pierre) to Ft. William (Ft. Laramie) traders trail; trade goods for the Indians, furs for Europe, ran a dozen miles North of here at Pineau Springs. White men came but they didn’t stay. Harney, called by the Indians ‘White Beard’ and ‘The Butcher,' was a passerby in 1885 when he came to overawe the Sioux and made the ‘old trail’ into a military road. In 1876 that same trail, for a decade, say millions of tons of freight pulled by 20 ox teams, hitched to lead, swing and trail wagons, pass enroute to the gold diggings in the Black Hills.

Likewise the fast stages on the Ft. Pierre-Deadwood line. Between the mud, the streams to ford, the Indians and hold up men, it was a rough 175 miles that had lived in legend.

Opened up in 1889, the settlers were slow to take over but it was part of that ‘cow empire,' the best grassed land in the universe for 15 years with (list of brands)

Jackson County, Highway 14 5 miles west of Cottonwood