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Dossier 1844BattlefieldMedium 59

Big Hole National Battlefield

Wisdom, Montana1 min readFile amended Directions

Big Hole National Battlefield is a battlefield in Wisdom, Montana, a National Battlefield. Memorial to the 1877 attack on a Nez Perce camp near Wisdom. HauntHunt files it with dark history. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. The site is open to visitors. For HauntHunt it is exactly the kind of file the archive exists for: a real place, a real record, and a story still being told.

Designation
National Battlefield
Coordinates
45.610, -113.446 · Approximate (city centroid)

Is Big Hole National Battlefield haunted?

No claims are filed here — the record keeps this place for its documented history, not for a haunting on file.

Filed under:Echoes of war

The record — long form

Big Hole is the meadow where the flight turned — the August 9, 1877 dawn attack that Colonel Gibbon's Seventh Infantry made on the sleeping Nez Perce camp on the North Fork, after the bands had crossed Lolo Pass believing the war was behind them. 'War was quit,' Yellow Wolf remembered of the night before. 'All Montana citizens our friends.' The first shot killed an old man checking the horses; the volleys went into the tipis.

The Nez Perce fought back — took the soldiers' howitzer, pinned the attack down, and held the field while the camp escaped. Sixty to ninety of them died, mostly women and children; Gibbon lost thirty-one. It was the army's worst defeat of the flight, and it didn't stop the march — the Nez Perce went on to Yellowstone and the Bear Paw. The battlefield is sacred ground now, the tipi poles and the grave markers kept by the Park Service and the tribe.

The file keeps Big Hole: the sleeping camp, the dawn volleys, the captured howitzer, and the meadow where the flight's worst day was also its resistance.

Big Hole is the archive's Nez Perce file — the surprise attack, the fight back, and the ground the tribe still holds sacred.

Why this file matters

Big Hole is the archive's Nez Perce file — the 1877 dawn attack, the captured howitzer, and the battlefield the tribe keeps.

A meadow attacked at dawn keeps its poles — the file's suggestion being that Big Hole's hold is the wrong war: the camp that thought it was safe, the soldiers who fired into tipis, and the ground where the flight refused to end.

Big Hole National Battlefield
Reference shelf · Wikipedia

Big Hole National Battlefield preserves a battlefield in the western United States, located in Beaverhead County, Montana. In 1877, the Nez Perce fought a delaying action against the U.S. Army's 7th Infantry Regiment here on August 9 and 10, during their failed attempt to escape to Canada. This action, the Battle of the Big Hole, was the largest battle fought between the Nez Perce and U.S. government forces in the five-month conflict known as the Nez Perce War.

Big Hole National Battlefield

Documented history

  • U.S. troops attacked on August 9, 1877. By August 10, almost ninety Nez Perce and thirty-one soldiers and volunteers had died, according to NPS. The site's documented military history is the record the rest of the file stands on. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'Big Hole National Battlefield'. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.

    Verified historyNational Park Service

Planning a visit

accessibility
Wheelchair-accessible facilities listed; individual trails require verification
public restroom
Available
last verified at
2026-09-14T10:36:21+00:00

Visitor details change. Confirm with the site before travelling.

Sources on file

Field notes & open questions

Included for documented public dark history. No paranormal or haunting claim inferred from suffering, deaths or abandonment. Site-specific access and precise coordinates require further research.

"Big Hole National Battlefield." HauntHunt dossier 1844, https://haunthunt.com/place/big-hole-national-battlefield-montana/ (file amended October 2, 2026).

Within ~50 miles

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