Little Bighorn River Canyon trail was originally established for the purposes of delivering mail to Bald Mountain City, a gold mining town, in the late 1800s. The trail is now primarily used by cattle ranchers, marathon runners, and fisherman. After flowing out of Wyoming and into Montana at the mouth of Little Bighorn Canyon, the entire remaining course of the Little Bighorn River and all its tributaries are within the boundaries of the Crow Indian Reservation, and access to the river is subject to the unique and confusing mixture of Montana state and Crow tribal law. Fishing within the boundaries of the Crow
Battle of the Little Bighorn relieve pressure on Reno's detachment (according to the Crow scout Curley, possibly viewed by both Mitch Bouyer and Custer) by withdrawing the skirmish line into the timber on the edge of the Little Bighorn River. Had the U.S. troops come straight down Medicine Tail Coulee, their approach to the Minneconjou Crossing and the northern area of the village would have been masked by the high ridges running on the northwest side of the Little Bighorn River. That they might have come southeast, from the center of Nye-Cartwright Ridge, seems to be supported by Northern Cheyenne accounts of seeing the approach