$65-Million ‘Theme Park’ Proposed on Reservation by Custer Battlefield : History: Developer is close to agreement with U.S., Crow tribe. Preservationists are aghast.

Call it Custerland.

On 24,000 acres adjacent to the spot where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer met his Maker, a private developer intends to build a tourist park of the American West, complete with buffalo and Native Americans.

The same plan would give the company exclusive rights to conduct tours of the battlefield--a national monument--and to sell merchandise.

The government has been receptive to the proposal; the Crow tribe supports it strongly. But for some preservationists, the plan is a gaudy sacrilege, thrust on the public through a veil of secrecy.

It’s “a tacky theme park,” said Robert Utley, retired chief historian of the National Park Service. “They’re trading away the national heritage for the somewhat dubious prospect of lots of money coming from the private sector.”

It was at the Little Big Horn that Custer and the men of the 7th U.S. Cavalry made their “last stand” in 1876, obliterated by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors in what may be the most famous battle of the American Indian wars.

The park itself is just 700 acres in size; it is surrounded by the Crow reservation, on which the tourist park would be built.

The proposal calls for North Shield Ventures Inc., led by Nashville radio-TV producer Lawson Stowe Warren, to pay royalties over a 30-year period to the Park Service and the Crow Tribe.

Warren, 39, declines to say where the money is coming from for the park, which he says will cost $65 million.

The park, called The Road to the Little Big Horn, would consist of 14 exhibits that would “weave a continually evolving story into a sensual tapestry of images and impressions of the American West,” Warren says.

They would include a herd of 100 buffalo, with Indian hunting parties stalking them; Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Sioux villages; a portrayal of “Thomas Jefferson’s world” of 1803; the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the West; daily life around Ft. Laramie; and the signing of treaties between the United States and Native American tribes.

The tour would culminate in “a 360-degree, three-minute, terrifying film presentation of what the Battle at the Little Big Horn would have looked like and sounded like,” Warren says.

Brad Stovall, a former Crow tribal administrator who helped negotiate the agreement, says criticisms are largely unfounded fears of “the Custer buffs.”

“This whole thing is going to be done very tastefully,” Stovall says. “It’s not going to be a Knotts Berry Farm or Disneyland-type operation whatsoever. It’s going to be a total living experience.”

And, he says, it’s going to produce a river of tourists for the gambling casino, restaurant, hotel and truck stop the tribe is building a mile away.

Warren says the park would provide 600 summer jobs for Native Americans--400 Crows, 100 each from the Northern Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux--and a smaller operation the rest of the year.

Warren also offers big money to the Crows. In return, the tribe would agree to prohibit development around the battlefield.

The attraction for the Park Service is the promise of millions of dollars from the tourist park, plus additional land for the battlefield and relief from some administrative duties.

North Shield would build and maintain a new visitor center at the battlefield for the Park Service, plus new housing for Park Service personnel.

But opponents decry both the proposal and what they say is the secrecy that surrounds it.

“The whole thing has been conducted from the beginning in such secrecy and among such confusion on the part of the National Park Service that, for a private citizen, it’s very difficult to sort out where it came from and where it’s going,” said Utley, the retired Park Service historian.

The charge dismays the Park Service, which held 15 public hearings on the proposal in Montana, Colorado and Washington, D.C.

But opponents point out the Park Service signed a “memorandum of understanding”--setting out the procedure for consideration of the proposal--in September, 1992, before the public knew negotiations were under way.

The Park Service didn’t reveal the agreement until forced to do so by a formal request under the federal open records law.

“The fact that we had to resort to the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the (memorandum) makes us all very suspect of any proposals,” James V. Court, a former superintendent of the battlefield, complained in a letter to regional director Robert M. Baker.

The Park Service fed opponents’ suspicions by abruptly ousting two longtime support groups, the Custer Battlefield Historical and Museum Assn. and the Custer Battlefield Preservation Assn., about the time the proposal surfaced.

The first group was no longer merely supportive and had become an adversary on this and other matters, the Park Service said; it said the other group, which aimed to buy more land for the park, would be unnecessary if the project went forward.

Utley and other opponents say the numbers just don’t add up: The battlefield’s 350,000 visitors a year can’t generate enough money to pay the cost of the tourist park. But even if true, he says, the numbers spell trouble for the battlefield monument.

“The Park Service just doesn’t have a record of being able to stand up to moneyed interests . . . ,” Utley says. “The whole thing just stinks to high heaven.”