For this week’s #TBT, we continue our journey down the Tongue River Water Trail checking out our newly installed signs which highlight historic events, themes, and figures nearby. This time, we’ll come ashore at Kendrick Park.
You are standing in front of Big Goose Creek. This waterway was a natural resource to the regional Plains Indian Tribes who hunted in the larger area known as the Powder River Basin. The Powder River Basin extends from the northeastern corner of Wyoming into southeastern Montana and into the western side of South Dakota that includes the Black Hills.
The Big Goose Buffalo Jump is an archaeological site on the Wyoming Listing of the National Register of Historic Places. In 1966, Dr. George Frison, then Wyoming State Archaeologist, began archaeological tests and excavations of the site. These investigations continued through 1970 and revealed the site was in use in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century placing it in the late prehistoric period.
The site consists of a drive lane where the bison were led to the jump-off point, and the stream bed below near the kill area. The water source to process the meat after the hunt would have been Big Goose Creek.
There are a couple of buffalo jump sites in the Sheridan County area.
Join us next week as we float on down the Tongue River Water Trail!
Kendrick Elk and Buffalo Park, year unknown, photo courtesy of Andrea Kuzara Knutson.
