1877: Custer, who had been buried there, was reinterred in West Point Cemetery.
29 January 1879: The Secretary of War first preserved the site as a U.S. National Cemetery, to protect graves of the 7th Cavalry troopers buried there.
7 December 1886: The site was proclaimed National Cemetery of Custer's Battlefield Reservation to include burials of other campaigns and wars. The name has been shortened to "Custer National Cemetery."
1976, The American Indian Movement protested the centennial commemoration of the site, arguing that the site revered Custer and the Battle of Little Big Horn as a part of a heroic saga of American history and expansion into the American West while those who revered it had been truly "celebrating an act of genocide."
11 August 1983: A wildfire destroyed dense thorn scrub which over the years had seeded itself about and covered the site. This allowed archaeologists access to the site.
1984, 1985: Archaeological digging on site.
10 December 1991: The site was renamed Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument by a law signed by then President George H. W. Bush.
Memorials
The first memorial on the site was assembled by Captain George K. Sanderson and the 11th Infantry. They buried soldiers' bodies where they were found and removed animal bones. In his official report dated April 7, 1879, Sanderson wrote:
I accordingly built a mound out of cord wood filled in the center with all the horse bones I could find on the field. In the center of the mound I dug a grave and interred all the human bones that could be found, in all, parts of four or five different bodies. This grave was then built up with wood for four feet above ground. The mound is ten feet square and about eleven feet high; is built on the highest point immediately in rear of where Gen'l Custer's body was found...
Lieutenant Charles F. Roe and the 2nd Cavalry built the granite memorial in July 1881 that stands today on the top of Last Stand Hill. They also reinterred soldiers' remains near the new memorial, but left stakes in the ground to mark where they had fallen. In 1890 these stakes were replaced with marble markers. The bill that changed the name of the national monument also called for an "Indian Memorial" to be built near Last Stand Hill. Markers honoring the Indians who fought at Little Big Horn, including Crazy Horse, have been added to those of the U.S. troops. On Memorial Day, 1999, the first of five red granite markers denoting where warriors fell during the battle were placed on the battlefield for Cheyenne warriors Lame White Man and Noisy Walking. The warriors' red speckled granite memorial markers dot the ravines and hillsides just as do the white marble markers representing where soldiers fell. Since then, markers have been added for the Sans Arc Lakota warrior Long Road and the MinniconjouLakotaDog's Back Bone. On June 25, 2003, an "unknown Lakota warrior marker" was placed on Wooden Leg Hill, east of Last Stand Hill to honor a warrior who was killed during the battle, as witnessed and reported by the Northern Cheyenne warrior Wooden Leg. The battlefield is the final resting place of the western historian and author Stanley Vestal, a professor at the University of Oklahoma.
