Little Big Horn Battlefield artefacts relocated

The National Park Service announced that the Little Bighorn Battlefield archives and collections will be temporarily relocated to a storage facility in Arizona. The move is to to protect and preserve the historic objects and records while the NPS works to establish a more secure and permanent repository at the battlefield.

The collection, which includes more than 123,000 historical archive items and nearly 26,000 historic objects and specimens, will go to the NPS’s Western Archaeological and Conservation Center (WACC), a premier preservation and storage facility. The temporary relocation will not include museum items and photographs already on display in the monument visitor centre, where they will remain on exhibit.
“This is great news for such a significant and irreplaceable collection,” said Kate Hammond, superintendent of the monument, which preserves the site of one of the most famous and iconic battles of the 19th-century Indian Wars on America’s western frontier. “We recognise the historical and cultural value of these priceless objects and archives. This temporary relocation will keep the collection together and available for researchers, in the best possible place for its protection and conservation until it can come home to a new museum facility.”
Move will prevent deterioration or catastrophic loss
Park Service and monument officials decided to move the Little Bighorn collection because of the potential for irreversible deterioration of items or catastrophic loss by fire or flood in its present, substandard location – the basement of the park’s small and outdated visitor centre.
“The collection and archives of Little Bighorn are nothing less than cultural and historical treasures,” said John Wessels, director of the NPS’s eight-state, 91-park Intermountain Region. “Unfortunately, all are at risk, and some need special attention. This temporary measure represents both a rescue effort and a commitment to protect these treasures now while we work to give them the permanent home they deserve.”

New visitor centre and museum
Wessels said the Park Service and the monument will press forward with efforts to build a new visitor centre and museum collection facility at Little Bighorn so the collection can return in improved condition for proper, permanent storage and display. New facilities would provide the room needed to convey more fully the causes and consequences of one of the nation’s most important and symbolic cultural and military conflicts.
“We are committed to concerted negotiations with the Crow Tribe, the Custer Battlefield Preservation Committee, and others interested in the monument’s future,” Wessels said. “A renewed collaboration with our partners to give these invaluable objects and archives a proper new home would enhance enormously how we tell the story and the lessons of Little Bighorn.”
We understand how important this collection is to the people of Montana, historians and the tribes associated with Little Bighorn
Superintendent Hammond added: “We understand how important this collection is to the people of Montana, historians and the tribes associated with Little Bighorn. Every step we take in this process is for the sake of preserving the collection and its ultimate return to the battlefield.”


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