Bear River Massacre

On January 29, 1863, California Volunteer troops under Colonel Patrick Connor attacked a Northwestern Shoshone winter village along the Bear River near present-day Preston, killing an estimated 250 to 500 men, women, and children, with estimates varying widely. The toll was higher than at the more widely known massacres at Sand Creek or Wounded Knee and makes it among the deadliest attacks on Native Americans in U.S. history. Overshadowed at the time by the Civil War, the site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990. In 2018 the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation bought about 500 acres where the massacre took place, and it is restoring the land and planning a cultural interpretive center. Visitors have reported hearing what sound like footsteps in the snow and children crying near the site in winter.