The Sidney-Black Hills Trail

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Beginning in 1874 thousands of freight wagons and stagecoaches passed here along the Sidney-Black Hills Trail. The route first supplied the Sioux at Red Cloud Agency on the White River and the troops at adjacent Camp Robinson. The southern terminus of the trail was at Sidney, Nebraska, on the Union Pacific Railroad. The 1874 discovery of gold in the Black Hills soon gave the trail new importance. Within two years it had been extended to Deadwood and other settlements in the Black Hills. Until about 1880 much of the freight for these mining camps was shipped from Sidney over this route. The peak 1878-1879 trade was estimated at more than twenty-two million pounds.