In the past year, Paul Horsted has put about 25,000 miles on his car driving around the plains of North and South Dakota. The local photographer has been traipsing across fields and up and down buttes in search of the trail of the 1874 Black Hills Expedition, led by Gen. George Armstrong Custer.

His interest in Custer's expedition began early in this century with the publication of his book, "Exploring with Custer." Co-written with fellow researcher Ernie Grafe, the book is a mile-by-mile guide to the expedition's journey through the Black Hills. At 300 pages, the book was barely enough to contain the pages of diary entries and photos taken on the expedition and didn't mention any of Custer's journey from Fort Lincoln by present-day Bismarck, N.D., to the Hills.

"I always felt like we were leaving a big chunk of the story untold," Horsted said.

So he and Grafe, along with researcher Jon Nelson, joined forces to tell the second part of the tale in a second book, "Crossing the Plains with Custer," which will be published next year.

The 1874 expedition was well-documented, Horsted said, and included the first pictures taken in the Black Hills, captured by William H. Illingworth. About 15 men kept diaries about the journey and the researchers also had access to reports and newspaper articles chronicling the expedition. Capt. William Ludlow of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers mapped the area as the expedition progressed, and it was from that map that Horsted began his journey.

The researchers were able to transfer the map using GPS technology and computers, comparing it to known locations on the plains.

After getting a general idea of where the expedition went, the team headed into the wilderness to try to locate specific sites.

Each man brings his own set of skills and expertise to the project.

As a photographer, Horsted's role in the project is to try to duplicate the pictures taken more than 100 years ago. In the first book, Horsted located many of the same spots and published his photo side by side with the original. Many of the locations are remarkably similar, with perhaps taller trees. Most of the expedition's pictures were taken in the Black Hills, so the photographic comparison won't be as large of a portion of the second book.

"There are a few photo sites out on the plains, not as many, but that will be part of the book," Horsted said. "I am a photographer, of course, primarily, so I've taken dozens of landscape photographs of places we know that they visited or passed by."

Grafe's role in the project has been to collect and organize the diaries and accounts of people on the expedition and to write the guide to the trail. Most of the accounts have been published in some form through the years.

"What interested me was something like 15 different people writing about the events at different times," said Grafe, who has a degree in history." It was fascinating to see the same event through a different set of eyes. Sometimes they would be interested in different things, so you'd get a fuller picture of some particular event."

Nelson first began researching the Black Hills Expedition as a personal hobby after moving to the Black Hills 10 years ago.

"It started out as a hobby where my wife and I would pack a lunch and drive out to the Hills and try to see where the expedition passed through," he said.

Horsted asked Nelson to join the project and lend his expertise about the expedition to the project.

"I guess what I have to contribute is some of my knowledge from exploring some of these camps and trails in the past 10 or 11 years," he said.

Horsted said Nelson has turned his history hobby into almost a profession, and has been called by area museums to share his knowledge.

"His knowledge has gone in to areas that very few, if anybody else, has," Horsted said.

In the past year of field research, the men have spent countless hours searching for places the expedition traveled on the plains.

"It has taken literally weeks or even months to locate these sites because we're using their latitude and longitude, which could be up to a couple of miles off," Horsted said. "It gets you in to the neighborhood, but then we use metal detectors (to help find sites)."

They have found artifacts from the expedition during their research, including square nails, ammunition dating to 1874, horse shoes and metal cans.

"We have found some other things, things that they threw away," he said. "So that's going to be a really interesting part of the book."

At times, the men were searching areas larger than 10 football fields to narrow down the campsite. The expedition was made up of more than 100 covered wagons and probably 1,500 horses, Horsted said.

"It has been very time-consuming," he said. "It's something we felt was critical to establishing the route."

While the first book contains new maps and tells the reader how to get to specific sites, the guidebook portion of the second book will be de-emphasized, Grafe said, because much of the trail is now on private property. Instead, the authors will tell readers where the trail intersects with public roads and property.

"It will give a general idea of the route. We do want to protect the private landowners," Grafe said. "This will be much more general in its guiding of the trail and will pretty much stick to current roads so that if you're on a road, you'll know that they crossed here, then you'll have to look out across the pasture to see where they would have gone."

Working with the landowners has been a great experience for the team, Horsted said.

"We literally had no one ever tell us we couldn't go on their property," he said. "Some of them were surprised to find out that Custer had passed through their area."

Most of the landowners were willing to allow the team to use metal detectors to locate artifacts from the expedition, and a few had artifacts of their own that they had discovered over the years.

The book will feature photos of the artifacts, including those in personal collections at from area museums. Some of the items discovered during research have been donated to The Journey Museum for its exhibit on the expedition.

"It is a very exciting part of this project to feature these artifacts, and the new book will be the first time many of them will be shown publicly," Horsted said.

While most of the field research is now complete and the team is moving to the writing and design phase, there are still some areas of the trail they were unable to locate. Among them is a location called Hell Creek, where the first dinosaur bone was found in the West, Grafe said. While it is described in the journals, there are several different buttes that the location might be.

"So far, we haven't been able to nail down which one it is," Grafe said.

One of the most rewarding parts of the research has been the knowledge that they were standing and looking at something the expedition-goers were looking at more than 100 years ago, Grafe said.

"There are certain landmarks that we identify: buttes, hills," he said. "And what was fun for both Paul and me is you can go stand look at the hill or a butte and then read about what people were writing about it at the time. You just sort of connect across time."

Nelson agreed.

"It's been really amazing," he said. "When I first started following the trail, I was hoping to find actual areas that they'd passed through, find physical evidence of it. The one thing I wasn't expecting to find was the friendship I've developed over the years with the many ranchers that live along the route."

The book is still about a year away from publication, Horsted said. It will be published by his company, Golden Valley Press, and will be available at local stores. After publication, The Journey Museum will have a release party for the book, hopefully in the fall of 2009, Horsted said. Details will be released as the event is closer.

"Exploring with Custer" is in its third edition and is available at The Journey, area art gallery and bookstores, or can be ordered online at www.dakotaphoto.com.

Contact Savannah Cummings at 394-8434 or savannah.cummings@rapidcityjournal.com.