Papers consist of Dodge’s twenty pocket journals, correspondence, works, photographs, and military documents.

The journals are as follows: six, dated May-October, 1875, kept on a genealogical surveying expedition in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory, four, dated October, 1876-January, 1877, while on the Powder River Expedition under General George Crook against Sioux and Northern Cheyenne Indians, eight, recording various activities of service chiefly in Indian Territory, written between September, 1878 and December, 1880, and two which describe his experiences in 1883 while on an inspection tour of western territories with General William T. Sherman. Journals have typed transcriptions of all but the earliest six,

Other material consists of correspondence, both to and from Dodge. Among correspondents are Julia P. Dodge, Frederick Paulding and a few other family members, Smithsonian Institution officials Spencer Baird, William T. Hornaday and Garrick Mallery, two official letters from General John Pope and two letters from Senator Henry L. Dawes, letters and documents relating to Dodge’s publisher Worthington and Co. of Hartford, CT, and twelve miscellaneous letters written to Dodge between 1887 and 1888.

Also, there are several articles and notes by Dodge including “Indian Boys and Girls” and “Rail Road Towns”, and “Itinerary of Trip in search of a site for New Post, 1879”, and a small collection of broadsides and military documents which appear in the Graff catalogue as Graff 1104, 1115, 1378, 4319, 4320, 4323 and 4324. A collection of photographs includes portraits of Richard I. Dodge, his wife Julia R. Paulding Dodge and her mother, and a small carte de visite of son Frederick. Also, numerous cartes de visite of military men, apparently collected in the 1860s, including an image of very young John Clem, noted “Drummer boy of Chickamauga”, circa 1863.

The journals of Richard I. Dodge have been edited and published by Dodge’s biographer Wayne R. Kime: in 1996 (Black Hills Journals), 1997 (Powder River Expedition), 2000 (The Indian Territory Journals) and 2002 (Sherman Tour Journals).