We have a book of photographs of Custer’s 1874 expedition into the Black Hills. What is amazing about it is that the author/historian/photographer who put the book together took a large format camera with the same framing dimensions as Custer’s photographer used, and painstakingly found and setup in the exact same spots, then used the old pictures to meticulously frame the modern photograph identically to the old.
The book has the old and the modern photos on facing pages, so they can be viewed together. Many of the old stumps from fires them are still extant; and some of the trees that in a unique location are still there, only 130 years older/larger; or now a recognizable snag.
The most amazing thing though is that in almost every photo, the modern scene is much more heavily forested, despite settlement. In the 1870s, the entire region was relatively sparsely forested. A couple of shots show Custer’s column in the middle distance, and the modern show the modern road almost exactly in his wagons’ tracks.
It is a little known and hardly publicized fact that Native Americans used fire to manage the extent of forest and grasslands. The landscape was manipulated for hundreds (if not thousands) of years by the hand of man. Not quite as pristine as most believed and were taught.