CROW AGENCY — As thousands of visitors prepare to gather at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, frustration is mounting among travelers and the business owners who rely on tourism generated by one of Montana's most visited historic sites.
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For more than a year, the national monument has been closed four days a week while construction continues on the new visitor center. The site has remained open only from Friday through Sunday since April 2025, a schedule that has caught many travelers by surprise and, according to employees at the nearby Custer Battlefield Trading Post and Café, has significantly reduced traffic through the area.
The trading post sits directly across Highway 212 from the battlefield entrance and has long served as a stop for visitors seeking food, fuel, gifts, and information about the historic site. The store and cafe have remained open seven days a week, year-round. Employees say the closure has altered travel patterns, discouraged some tourists from stopping, and created uncertainty heading into what would normally be one of the busiest weeks of the year.
"It hurts us in a way because it hurts our economy here, it hurts our gas station's economy," said Keianna Cachora, a cashier who has worked at the trading post since 2018. "We're a good central point here as well for people to stop, but because people see that the park's closed, they'll just come right past."
The disappointment is often visible when visitors arrive expecting to tour the battlefield only to learn it is closed, she said.
"It's upsetting because you save all this money, save all this time, put away your PTO, and you can't — you're using it, but not for what you wanted to see," Cachora said.
Related:Jury said the battlefield was one of several destinations they had specifically planned to visit.
"We had a list of all the points we wanted to catch on our trip," she said. "So this was definitely one of them."
International travelers have faced similar disappointment.
Matthias Berles, who was visiting from Germany with friends during a multistate trip that included Yellowstone National Park, said they altered their route specifically to stop at the battlefield.
"We wanted to visit here, the battlefield, but we have heard it's closed, unfortunately," Berles said. "We extra came this way to visit it."
For employees at the trading post, the impact extends beyond lost sales.
Kevin Shawn, a server at the café, said the closure has reduced opportunities for visitors to learn about the area's history and Native culture.
"It's a tough deal, and it's heartbreaking for us as well because we want people to know about this," Shawn said. "We want people to know about our culture and the story and everything that's happened there."
He described the shift in visitor traffic as dramatic compared with previous years.
"It's kind of a mood killer for them," Shawn said. "Whereas before, when it was open all the time, it was constantly busy."
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Food and finds: Trading post in Crow Agency a popular stop for tourists and localsGeneral manager Rhonda Elhard, who has worked at or near the battlefield for more than four decades, said the business has recorded roughly a 20% decline in visitation since the closures. She said lower traffic has translated into reduced sales and hiring fewer employees.
While Elhard said improvements to the visitor center are ultimately welcome, she believes communication surrounding the project has fallen short.
"I just see a lack of empathy for those people that want to go through and drive through the Little Bighorn," she said.
Her concerns have intensified as the 150th anniversary approaches. Elhard said visitors regularly stop at the trading post seeking information about anniversary activities, transportation plans, and site access, but employees often do not have answers.
“The shocking one is that they're not being open beforehand. They're only opening for a three-day event," she said. "And during that three-day event, they're not going to have cars be able to travel through ... Where's the bus going to be? We don't have information about how they're going to make sure that everybody knows where to go."
Elhard also worries about logistics during anniversary events, particularly plans that could require visitors to use shuttle transportation rather than personal vehicles.
“It might be 7,000 to 10,000 people, and yet they're going to bus them with four buses of 20," said Elhard. "That makes no sense.”
Questions about the construction timeline have added to the frustration. Employees said they initially expected major work to be completed last year before the anniversary observance.
"It's been a little longer because they said that they would try to get it done by the anniversary, and the anniversary is in a couple days," Cachora said. "You've got to give them leeway and give them grace, but also you had 150 years to get this finished."
According to Elhard, the project is now expected to continue through October.
Despite their criticism, trading post staff emphasized that they support improvements to the monument and want visitors to have a better experience in the long term. Their primary concern, they said, is transparency about timelines and access.
"I just hope that they can take accountability and responsibility for that and hopefully clear the air and say, 'We're working on it as fast as we can,'" Shawn said. "Just be a little bit more transparent in where they're at with the process and what's going on up there."
For Elhard, the issue goes beyond tourism dollars.
"They're not taking into consideration that it is a cemetery," she said. "Closing a cemetery is just not conducive to what we should be doing as a nation."
MTN News reached out to park officials for comment but had not received a response by publication time.
