George Armstrong Custer - Monuments and Memorials

Monuments and Memorials

• Counties are named in Custer's honor in six states: Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Custer County, Idaho, is named for the General Custer Mine, which was named for Custer. Townships in Michigan and Minnesota were named for Custer. There are also the villages of Custer, Michigan and Custer, Ohio, the city of Custer, South Dakota, and the unincorporated town of Custer, Wisconsin. A portion of Monroe County, Michigan, is informally referred to as "Custerville".
• Custer National Cemetery is within Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the site of Custer's death.
• An equestrian statue of Custer by Edward Clark Potter was erected in Monroe, Michigan, his boyhood home, in 1910.
• Fort Custer National Military Reservation, near Augusta, Michigan, was built in 1917 on 130 parcels of land, as part of the military mobilization for World War I. During the war, some 90,000 troops passed through Camp Custer.
• The establishment of Fort Custer National Cemetery (originally Fort Custer Post Cemetery) took place on September 18, 1943, with the first interment. On Memorial Day 1982, more than 33 years after the first resolution had been introduced in Congress, impressive ceremonies marked the official opening of the cemetery.
• Custer Hill is the main troop billeting area at Fort Riley, Kansas.
• The US 85th Infantry Division was nicknamed The Custer Division.
• The Black Hills of South Dakota is full of evidence of Custer, with a county, town, and the Custer State Park all located in the area.
• The Custer house at Fort Lincoln, near present-day Mandan, North Dakota has been reconstructed as it was in Custer's day, along with the soldiers' barracks, block houses, etc. Annual re-enactments are held of Custer's 7th Cavalry's leaving for the Little Bighorn.
• On July 2, 2008, a marble monument to Brigadier General Custer was dedicated at the site of the 1863 Civil War Battle of Hunterstown in Adams County, Pennsylvania.
• Custer Monument at the United States Military Academy was first unveiled in 1879. It now stands next to his grave in the West Point Cemetery.