Photographing Custer's Battlefield: The Images of Kenneth F. Roahen by Sandy Barnard

In the 140 years since the defeat of George Armstrong Custer and his troops at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, scholars and other visitors have combed the site of today’s Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument for evidence that might clarify the controversial events of June 1876. In Photographing Custer’s Battlefield, Sandy Barnard, an expert on Custer and the Little Big Horn, presents the work of the site’s most dedicated photographer, U.S. Fish and Game agent Kenneth F. Roahen (1888–1976), revealing further mysteries of the battlefield and showing how it has changed.

Barnard opens by introducing readers to Roahen, who spent the last phase of his career and his retirement years in Montana, where he made it his personal mission from the 1930s to the 1970s to photograph what was then called Custer Battlefield. Among Roahen’s most useful images are his photographs of the Crow’s Nest, the Morass, and Girard’s Knoll—places whose precise locations have long been debated. He also made a series of pioneering aerial photographs of the Little Big Horn and its surrounding landscape.

Hardcover

280 pages

ISBN: 0806151595