Camp Devin

On June 1, 1878 Lieutenant Colonel Luther P. Bradley and 520 men of the 9th United States Infantry left Fort Laramie following the Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage route to the Black Hills.

Their mission was to construct a telegraph line between Deadwood and Fort Keogh, thus tying together Montana, Wyoming, and Dakota Territories.

At the conclusion of a 30-day march they established a summer bivouac on June 30, 1878, and named it Camp Devin for Colonel and Brevet Major General Thomas C. Devin, the late commander of the 3rd U.S. Cavalry, who had died on April 4, 1878.

The completed telegraph line resulted in improved communications between forts and white settlements, opening the way for domestication of southeast Montana.

Just outside Alzada near the Montana-Wyoming Border on Montana Highway 326 there is a historical marker giving information about Camp Devin.