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Joe Crosson was the brother of popular female aviator, Marvel Crosson. He was best known as an Alaskan pilot, often doing mercy missions. He helped search for the missing pilot Carl Ben Eielson. He flew the bodies of Will Rogers and Wiley Post back to the U.S. after they crashed in Alaska.

Crosson also flew during the winter in an open cockpit. He was tasked with carrying a serum to Barrow, AK. He was also known as the first pilot to land on a glacier.

Historical Marker Inscription

A Tribute to the Memory of
Joe Crosson
1903-1949

Pioneer Alaska Aviator
Who helped put Fairbanks and
Alaska on the air map of the world

Joe Crosson landed many times
On the Chena River near this spot

Dedicated during Golden Days
observances – July 20, 1958

Location

64° 50’ 37.860” N, 147° 43’ 20.082” W

First Ave, Fairbanks, AK  99701, United States

This historical marker commemorates the beaver slide, a wooden device used for stacking hay. It was originally called the Beaverhead Country Slide Stacker. It was invented in 1908 by two Big Hole Valley (located in Southwest Montana) residents: Dade Stephens and H. Armitage.

The device can stack hay up to 30 feet high, and the piles can last anywhere from 2 to 6 years. The body is a 30-foot wood frame with an inclined plane. Hay is pulled up to about 20 feet in the air before it’s launched through a gap at the top of the machine. The machine is portable so it could be moved from field to field.

While modern technology has largely replaced this device, it’s still in use in many places today.

Historical Marker Inscription

The Little Blackfoot Valley is filled with lush hay fields. You already may have noticed the rounded haystacks and commented on the strange lodgepole structures standing in many of the fields. This contraption that looks like a cross between a catapult and a cage is a hay-stacker that actually acts like a little of both. It was invented before 1910 by Dade Stephens and H. Armitage in the Big Hole Valley about sixty miles south of here. The device, called a beaver slide, revolutionized haying in Montana. It helped keep the wind from blowing the hay away and cut stacking time considerably.

To work the beaver slide, a large rake piled high with hay is run up the arms of the slide (the sloping portion of the “catapult”). At the top the hay dumps onto the stack. The side gates (the cage part) keep the stack in a neat pile and make it possible to stack higher. The sides were added to the system in the late 1940s. Although the lifting of the rake is usually powered by a take-off from a tractor, truck or car axle, on some operations horse teams still provide the rpm’s to muscle the hay up the slide.

Aside from minor improvements, the beaver slide has remained unchanged since its inception. Once used throughout a good portion of the northern west, modern technology that can shape hay into bales, loaves or huge jelly rolls have replaced it in many areas. The Little Blackfoot is one of several valleys in Montana where you can still see the beaver slide and its distinctive haystacks.

Location

46° 35’ 27.780” N, 112° 39’ 25.218” W
US-12, Avon, MT  59713, United States

Originally called Spark Hill, the location would later be called Greenhill. It was one of several African American communities in the Greater Mount Pleasant area. Freedman Hardy Green bought 30 acres in the area in 1870. Children from the neighboring Old Village community would walk to the town to attend the Laing School. The community was sustained by farming.

Now, the area is a residential community.

Historical Marker Inscription

Greenhill Community

In 1870, freedman Hardy Green purchased 30 acres of land along Mathis Ferry Road. The area was called Spark Hill, but was later named Greenhill by the Moultrie School District. Children walked several miles to Laing School, then in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. Greenhill received electricity in 1942, paved roads in 1951, and was annexed into Mount Pleasant in 1983.

Greenhill Farming

Farming was the major source of income in Greenhill. People, produce and livestock were carried aboard boats from a dock behind Somerset Point to the Charleston City Market. In the 1920s and ‘30s, mules and wagons transported goods to a ferry at Shem Creek. The LOOP Bus became a major source of transportation in the 1940s. Greenhill continues to thrive as a residential community.

Location

32° 48’ 52.128” N, 79° 52’ 6.900” W

932–940 Mathis Ferry Rd, Mount Pleasant, SC  29464, United States

Known as the Emigrant Road, this route was favored by the Hudson’s Bay Company during the mid-1800s. The road ran from Snake River in the north to South-Central Idaho. As an alternative to the Oregon Trail, which tended to be difficult, the Hudson’s Bay Company traders used it to go between Fort Hall and Fort Boise.

Emigrants, on the other hand, had to take a route further south since the road was not initially designed to allow for wagons. With later improvements, emigrants would be able to use this route.

There is a dispute amongst historians as to whether this road was part of the North Alternate to the Oregon Trail, which would have made it part of the Oregon Trail System.

Historical Marker Inscription

More than a century ago, fur trappers and emigrants followed an old Indian trail that crossed here on its way to Oregon.

Hudson’s Bay Company traders preferred this route between Fort Hall and Fort Boise, but early emigrant wagons had to travel a road south of Snake River until ferries and road improvements let wagons come this way. Shoshone Falls — known until 1849 as Canadian Falls to British and French trappers — was a spectacular attraction along this road.

Location

42° 37’ 13.032” N, 114° 26’ 57.978” W
US-93 N, Jerome, ID  83338, United States

This highway along Fall River is dedicated to Governor Leslie Jensen. He was the Republican 15th Governor of South Dakota from January 5, 1937 to January 3, 1939.  He was a native of Hot Springs, South Dakota.  Jensen was known as the “father of the modern highway system in South Dakota”.

While successful in office, Jensen decided not to run for a second term as governor and instead ran for the U.S. Senate, but he was defeated in the primary. He served in World War I and World War II.  He was honorably discharged in 1945.

Historical Marker Inscription

This highway along Fall River is dedicated to Leslie Jensen, 15th Governor of South Dakota 1937-1939, a native of Hot Springs, and a son of Chris Jensen, Black Hills Pioneer and Lillie May Haxby Jensen. Educated in Hot Springs, Culver Military Academy and the University of South Dakota, he took an early interest in the Military and was a Lieutenant in the 4th South Dakota Infantry on the Mexican Border in 1916-17 and when that organization became the 147th Field Artillery in World War I, he went to France with it and was the Regimental Adjutant. Staying with the 147th, he was its Lieutenant Colonel in 1937 when, as Governor, he became his own Commander-in-Chief. Promoted to Colonel in 1941, he took his Regiment to the South Pacific in World War II and when the Regiment was battalionized in 1943, he served with distinction as a Base Commander on the staff of the Commanding General of the Sixth Army. In 1921 he was appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for the District of South Dakota serving until 1934 when he returned to Hot Springs and to the telephone business which his father had started in 1894. His administration, in 1937, initiated

Reverse Side

You Are Entering
Hot Springs,
Sites Of
National and State
Soldiers Homes

Location

1301 Fall River Rd, Hot Springs, SD  57747, United States
43° 25’ 8.892” N, 103° 27’ 31.680” W

The Tullis-Toledano Manor was once listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. It was built around 1856 and was a red-clay brick Greek Revival home. The property also went by the name Toledano-Philbrick-Tullis House.

The property was built by Christoval Sebastian Toledano, who was a wealthy sugar and cotton broker in New Orleans of Spanish descent. The house was built as a vacation property for his second wife, Matilda Pradat. The property also included a servant’s quarter.

Matilda Toledano sold the home in 1886. It was sold a number of times before Garner H. Tullis of New Orleans bought it in 1939. Tullis was president of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. He later sold the manor to the City of Biloxi in 1975 who used it as a museum and community center.

In 1969, the home had been damaged by Hurricane Camille. It was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005 when a barge was pushed ashore and reduced the property to rubble.

Historical Marker Inscription

One of the most substantial of the early vacation houses on the Gulf Coast, the Tullis-Toledano House was built in 1856 for New Orleans native Christoval Sebastian Toledano (1789-1869) and his wife, Matilda Pradat Toledano. The estate, composed of a Creole-influenced Greek Revival house, detached kitchen, servants quarters, and carriage house, was purchased by the Tullis family in 1939. Damaged during Hurricane Camille and later restored, the house was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 2013

Location

30° 23′ 33.780″ N, 88° 52′ 10.002″ W

Beach Boulevard, Biloxi, MS 39530 United States