Surely This Spot Was Meant for Yellowstone Kelly

By editor

Billings, Yellowstone County, Montana

Luther S. Kelly’s last will and testament, dated July 7, 1927, was not a document of grand speeches or broad declarations. It was a quiet command, a simple request that his body find rest in Montana rather than the sprawling rows of Arlington National Cemetery. “I direct that the whole be tendered to the Authorities of the State of Montana at Helena,” he wrote with a soldier’s plainness. “I feel that my body will rest better in Montana, the scene of my earlier activities, than it would in the vastness of Arlington.”

Kelly, known to many as Yellowstone Kelly, was a man whose life had been shaped by the wild lands and violent conflicts of the American West. Born in 1849 in New York, he left home as a teenager and found himself drawn to the West’s open spaces and tangled struggles. By the 1870s, he was serving as an army scout, guiding troops through the rough country around the Yellowstone River. His knowledge of the land was as precise as a rifle shot, and his skill in navigating hostile terrain earned him a reputation among soldiers and settlers alike.

When Kelly died on December 17, 1928, at the age of 79, Montana was ready to claim one of its own. His body was escorted by a military honor guard from the place of his death all the way to Billings. There, it was placed temporarily in a local mausoleum, while plans were made for his final journey. The highest point of Swords Rimrock Park, a rocky outcrop overlooking the broad sweep of the Yellowstone River valley, was renamed Kelly Mountain and chosen as his grave.

The funeral took place on June 29, 1929. A horse-drawn wagon carried his casket slowly up the winding trail to the rim. The procession was led by colors and a riderless horse, a silent shadow of the man who had once ridden hard into battle and peril. A military guard stood present, their uniforms representing the Civil War, the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, and the First World War. The Billings Rotary Boys Band played as the people gathered--nearly a thousand citizens of Billings and the surrounding area--came to witness this final act of farewell.

The scene was stark, the late spring sun casting long shadows across the rimrock. The wind carried the dry scent of sagebrush and the distant roar of the Yellowstone River far below. It was a wild place, the land still raw with the memory of conflict and survival. Kelly’s career had been forged in this unforgiving landscape. He had scouted for General Nelson A. Miles during the brutal campaigns against Sitting Bull and the Nez Perce in the late 1870s. In those years, the land was not just a backdrop but a participant in the violence--a place where men died from gunshot wounds, exhaustion, and the biting cold.

Kelly once told an interviewer, “I have seen men fall at my side, their blood soaking the earth I knew so well.” His memoirs, written late in life and published by Yale University Press, do not flinch from the raw details of those fights. He described the confusion of battle, the sharp crack of rifles in the cold air, and the taste of dust and smoke. His words carry the weight of a man who lived through the grinding uncertainty of war, not the clean, heroic narratives often told afterward.

The choice of Kelly Mountain as his burial site was no accident. It was a place where one could look out over the same land that had shaped him--rugged hills and river valleys stretching wide under the endless Montana sky. The hill itself was a vantage point, a place of quiet watching, much like Kelly’s own life had been. The spot seemed to answer the man’s wish to rest in a place tied deeply to his past.

Each year, on the anniversary of his death, May Kelly, his widow, sent a wreath from their farm in Paradise, California. That simple act connected the distant farm to the Montana hills, a silent tribute carried across the miles. Today, that wreath is represented on his headstone, a small symbol of enduring memory.

The funeral's military honor guard was a rare gathering, reflecting the breadth of Kelly's service and the many conflicts that had scarred the nation. Veterans from the Indian Wars, Spanish-American War, and World War I stood shoulder to shoulder, a grim reminder of the persistent violence that had shaped the country from the 19th century through the 20th. Their presence underscored the fragmented nature of American history--how battles and campaigns overlapped and how men like Kelly had worn many hats: scout, soldier, hunter, and chronicler.

Kelly’s Spanish War saber, a relic from the fight at La Lud, Luzon in the Philippines, was placed with him in his casket. It was a symbol not only of his military career but of the far-reaching conflicts in which he had taken part. From the western plains to the tropical islands of the Pacific, his life was linked by the sharp edge of a blade and the sharp crack of a rifle.

Yet, there was a quiet irony in his request to be buried in Montana. The place where he had survived ambushes and harsh winters was also a land of displacement--for the Native peoples who had once called it home. Kelly’s memoirs speak of the Nez Perce and Sioux with a soldier’s respect but also reveal the brutal reality of those campaigns. The “Indian Wars” were not neat battles but prolonged struggles with deep costs on both sides. Kelly’s body resting on this land was a reminder of those tangled histories, the price paid in blood and broken lives.

As the ceremony ended and the crowd dispersed down the rocky trail, the wind swept across Kelly Mountain, carrying with it the dry dust of the years and the faint memory of gunfire. The spot was quiet now, but not empty. It held the stories of a man who had walked the edge of wilderness and war, who had seen the land change beneath his feet and had chosen to rest where it all began.

The landscape itself--rough, exposed, and unyielding--was perhaps the only fitting place for a man like Yellowstone Kelly. In his own words, Montana was the scene of his earlier activities. It was where he belonged.

See also

• Surely This Spot Was Meant for Yellowstone Kelly at Billings, Yellowstone County
• Luther Sage Yellowstone Kelly at Billings, Yellowstone County
• Skeleton Cliff at Billings, Yellowstone County