"Alamo vs. Little Bighorn" Topic

These are both the most famous battles fought in the West but which one do you think is more famous? That is, which battlefield do you think has more visitors and which battle has had the most books written on it?
Also, if you had to choose, would you rather fight at the Alamo or Little Bighorn? Actually fight in the real battle, for either side.

Little Big Horn

I'd opt to be a Mexican at the Alamo….

I would say that the Alamo has more visitors.

The Alamo.

Little Big Horn. But with Benteen or even Reno NOT part of Custer's command.

I'm guessing the Alamo has more visitors.

More books have been written about Little Bighorn.

And I would fight at Little Bighorn with the Sioux.

The Alamo is in the middle of downtown San Antonio, it has millions of visitors per year.

Alamo. Easier to reach from the big cities.

Alamo without a doubt has more visitors. However, if they are expecting to see a battlefield they need to go to the Little Bighorn.

Of the two, apparently Little Big Horn is the more memorable.

When you bring up the other, I hear folks all the time having to say, "Remember the Alamo?"

In favor of fighting at the Alamo, the defenders there were fighting for a cause (freedom from Mexico); on the negative side, once Bonham brought word that Fannin had turned back to Goliad and would not be reinforcing the Alamo defenders, they pretty much knew they were "dead men walking" for the last several days of the siege.
At the Little BigHorn, the troops under Custer probably thought they would be winning a great victory until maybe two hours before the fighting there ended. That's a plus; however, once things started going really bad (Troops L and I being overrun), most of them probably feared being tortured and having a very painful death. There are theories that maybe 20--40 of the troopers committed suicide, either individually or with a "bunkie" to avoid such a fate. Here, a big negative. (Actually the Sioux weren't big on torture--that was more of an Apache thing. The Sioux did do a lot of enemy mutilation after the enemy was dead, not to be mean especially, but to handicap an opponent if they were to ever meet again in the afterlife. However, if the Sioux women were present (as was the case at the LBH), it was left to the women and children to do most of the dispatching of the wounded enemy and mutilation. The majority of the 211 officers, troopers and civilians with Custer were probably wounded but incapacitated when the fighting around them ended. If conscious, they would have had to just lie there as the Sioux women worked their way over the battlefield before getting to them--not a pleasant thought. They did most of the "final dispatching--usually with a knife or club. Because of that, I think I would vote for defending the Alamo.

What Choctaw said -- the Alamo is readily accessible but almost unrecognizable from how it appeared at the time of the 1836 battle. Little Bighorn is well off the beaten track but much less changed in the intervening time. You can still get a sense of what it looked and felt like for the participants at the Little Bighorn.

I'd be surprised if the Alamo hasn't been more written about, especially in the last 30 years -- just a TON of new books and published research. And a journal published three times a year by the Alamo Society.

I'd stand at the Alamo with the defenders if I HAD to make a choice. Rather end up dead and burned than scalped and dismembered. Although in a way my sympathies in both these conflicts probably lie more with the Plains Indians than anyone else.

They are making efforts to improve the Alamo, buying up property across the street and doing some excavation. Like any other urban area, the city changes and built up around it. At one time, it was a crappy part of town, and now it's a crown jewel of San Antonio.

Ironically, the Menger Hotel is next to the Alamo. Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders trained in the area, and famously shot up the bar at the hotel (you can still see bullet holes in the woodwork).

As far as "famous," it's a coin toss. In Saving Private Ryan, they weren't falling back to make their last stand at the Little Bighorn.

No trip to visit the Alamo is complete without stopping at the historic Menger Hotel Bar for a drink and the atmosphere!

Plus the Kings X hobby shop is just around the corner -- lots of toy soldiers to oggle!