The Thomas Party

Map Location

Maps detected!

---

This page uses Google Maps. The map will be loaded from Google-Server and some of your data may be used by Google. In order to see the maps, please click accept. You can also click here to see further information related to this.

Deny Accept

Categories:

Historical Markers/Interpretive Sign,  Historic Sites

Keywords:

• The Thomas Party, 
• Montana Historical Markers

General info

Location: East of Greycliff

In 1866, William Thomas, his son Charles, and a driver named Schultz left southern Illinois bound for the Gallatin Valley, Montana. Traveling by covered wagon, they joined a prairie schooner outfit at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and started over the Bridger Trail. The train was escorted by troops detailed to build a fort (C. E Smith) on the Big Horn River.

From the site of this fort, the Thomas party pushed on alone. A few days later they were killed at this spot by hostile Indians. Emigrants found the bodies and buried them in one grave.

The meager details which sifted back greatly impressed William Thomas’s seven-year-old nephew. Seventy-one years later (1937), this nephew closely followed the Bridger Trail by car and succeeded in locating the almost forgotten grave.

Gallery