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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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DULL KNIFE BATTLEFIELD
Wyoming
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Location: Johnson County, just off an unimproved
road, about 23 miles west of Kaycee. Make local inquiry.
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At this site on the Red Fork of the Powder River in
the winter of 1876 the Army defeated Dull Knife and his Cheyennes, who
had helped whip Custer the previous summer. Beginning the retaliatory
campaigns, Crook marched from Fort Fetterman back into the Powder River
country. At dawn on November 25, 1876, Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie's 4th
Cavalry surprised Dull Knife's winter camp. Indian casualties were
light, 25 deaths, but the troops destroyed the bulk of the Indians'
shelter, food, and clothing. Most of the survivors, recognizing the
futility of holding out any longer, surrendered in the spring at Fort
Robinson, Nebr., along with Crazy Horse and his people.
The battlefield, in a picturesque setting among
rugged hills on a privately owned ranch, is marked by a stone monument,
on the side of a hill. A ranch headquarters at the upper end of the
canyon and a hay meadow downstream do not appreciably alter the natural
scene.
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FORT BRIDGER
Wyoming
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Location: Uinta County, just south of I-80,
adjacent to the town of Fort Bridger.
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This fort's rich history spans practically all phases
of western development except the fur trade. The first Fort Bridger was
a mud and pole trading post, founded in 1842 or 1843 on Black's Fork of
the Green River by the mountain man Jim Bridger and his partner, Luis
Vasquez, to trade with Indians and emigrants. A significant landmark on
the Oregon-California Trail, it was the second major stopping place on
one of the two major routes west of Fort Laramie, Wyo., and second only
to it as a supply point. In 1853 a group of Mormons, who earlier in the
year has set up a rival post, Fort Supply, 12 miles to the south, bought
or forced Bridger out. At his post they erected several stone houses
within a huge stone wall. In 1857, just before U.S. troops arrived en
route to the Utah, or Mormon, War (1857-58), the Mormons put the torch
to Forts Bridger and Supply. The troops wintered nearby at a temporary
camp of mud and skin lean-tos. In the spring the bulk of them proceeded
to Salt Lake City, but some remained to begin rebuilding a permanent
fort of log and stone.
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Jim Bridger, ex-mountain man,
founded the trading post in southwestern Wyoming that was the
Predecessor of the Army's Fort Bridger. (Kansas Historical
Society) |
During the Civil War, the garrison dwindled in
numbers, but Regular troops returned in 1866. A base of operations for
southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah, the post guarded stage
routes and the transcontinental telegraph line, accommodated a Pony
Express station, patrolled emigrant trails, took action against Indian
raids, guarded the miners who moved into the South Pass and Sweetwater
region, and protected and supplied workers building the Union Pacific
Railroad not far to the north. Treaties were signed at the fort with the
friendly Shoshonis in 1863 and 1868, the second creating a reservation
east of the Wind River Mountains. Although strategically located, the
fort never served as a base for any of the major military expeditions of
the 1870's against the Indians in the region, but some of the garrison
was reassigned for fighting purposes. Temporarily abandoned in 1878,
reactivated in 1880, the post was finally evacuated in 1890.
Acquired in 1928 by the State and today a State
historical park, the site contains a group of well-preserved and
maintained structures, amid a heavy overgrowth of vegetation and trees.
Some restoration has been accomplished, and the State has extensive
developmental plans. The 1884 barracks building has been completely
reconstructed and houses a museum. Crumbling ruins of the commissary
building and the old guardhouse, both built in 1858, are visible. In
better condition are the new guardhouse (1884), sentry box (1858),
officers' quarters (1858), sutler's store, Pony Express stables, post
office, a group of lesser buildings, and a portion of the wall
constructed by the Mormons. The foundations of other buildings are
marked. Interred in the cemetery are Bridger's daughter and Judge W. A.
Carter, pioneer rancher in the area. Portions of the original fort
grounds and some buildings are located on privately owned property
outside the State-owned area.
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Fort Bridger in 1889, the year
before the last troops left. (Natiional
Archives) |
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FORT CASPER and PLATTE BRIDGE FIGHT SITE
Wyoming
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Location: Natrona County, Casper and
vicinity.
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The predecessor of Fort Casper (1865-67) was Platte
Bridge Station, established in 1858 as one of a series of fortified
stations on the Oregon-California Trail. Located on the south side of
the North Platte River at a crossing point and emigrant campground, the
Platte Bridge post protected wagon trains, mail stages, and the
supply-communication lines of the Mormon Expedition to Utah (1857-58).
Adjacent to the fort, at a place known as Mormon Ferry, emigrants
crossed the river by ferry, operated by some Mormons in the years
1847-50 and thereafter by a private company. Regular troops abandoned
the station in 1859, the same year a 1,000-foot toll bridge was
completed across the river. This bridge supplemented one a few miles to
the east, built in 1853.
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Fort Casper and Platte Bridge.
Artist and date of lithograph unknown. (National
Archives) |
In 1862, during the Civil War, to counter increased
Indian hostilities along the Oregon-California Trail and to guard the
telegraph lines, Volunteers reoccupied Platte Bridge Station. The Indian
threat reached a peak in the summer of 1865, when 3,000 Sioux,
Cheyennes, and Arapahos descended on the trail from the Powder River
country. On July 26, on the north side of the North Platte River, they
ambushed a detachment of Kansas cavalry under Lt. Caspar W. Collins
riding out from Platte Bridge Station to escort an eastward-bound Army
wagon train, guarded by Sgt. Amos J. Custard and 24 men. The troops
managed to fight their way back to the bridge, but Collins and four men
lost their lives. The Indians then attacked the wagon train, killing
Custard and 19 other soldiers. Through an error, the Army renamed Platte
Bridge Station as Fort Casper, the spelling adopted by the city that
grew up adjacent to it. Troops enlarged and rebuilt the fort in 1866,
but the following year evacuated it and moved to Fort Fetterman, Wyo.
Almost immediately the Indians burned the buildings and the bridge.
A replica of Fort Casper at the southwestern edge of
Casper marks the site of the original log fort. Constructed in the
1930's, it is owned by the city and administered by the Fort Caspar
Commission. The Fort Casper Museum, West 13th Street, interprets the
history of the fort and station, including the ambush and the attack on
the wagon train.
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FORT FETTERMAN
Wyoming
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Location: Converse County, on the Orpha Cutoff,
accessible via I-25, about 11 miles northwest of Douglas.
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Figuring notably in the campaigns of the late 1860's
and 1870's against the northern Plains tribes, this fort was founded in
the summer of 1867 on the Bozeman Trail about 80 miles northwest of Fort
Laramie. Along the south bank of the North Platte River, the post was an
intermediate base between Fort Laramie and Forts Reno, Phil Kearny, and
C. F. Smith. The latter three forts had been established the previous
summer to guard the trail but had been under continual siege. By the
time Fort Fetterman was activated, the Sioux and Cheyennes had halted
traffic over the trail. When the Government, as a concession to the
Indians, abandoned the three forts in the summer of 1868, isolated Fort
Fetterman assumed major importance as a supply base, headquarters, and
marshaling point for expeditions into the hostile Powder River country.
The post also protected the nearby routes of the Union Pacific Railroad
and the Oregon-California Trail.
Fort Fetterman was the base for General Crook's three
expeditions in 1876 into the Powder River area: in March, culminating in
the Battle of Powder River, Mont.; in May-June, ending in the Battle of
the Rosebud, Mont.; and in November, highlighted by the defeat of Dull
Knife's Cheyennes along the Powder River. The latter expedition,
combined with others in 1876-77, ended the major phase of Army-Indian
conflict on the northern Plains. The Indians confined to reservations,
Fort Fetterman was abandoned in 1882. But "Fetterman City," a wild town
that was the prototype for "Drybone" in Owen Wister's western novels,
grew up at the fort, an outfitting point for wagon trains. In 1886,
however, when Douglas replaced "Fetterman City," most of the fort
buildings were sold, dismantled, and moved to other locations.
Part of the site is in private ownership, but since
1962 the State has owned most of it and is developing a State historical
park. Prior to 1962, vandals had caused much damage. The State has
restored the two remaining original buildings: a log and adobe duplex
officers' quarters, today housing a small museum, open in the summer,
and caretaker's quarters; and a rammed-earth ordnance warehouse.
Foundations of other buildings may be viewed. The setting is unchanged
except for agricultural operations. Ruts, apparently from the Bozeman
Trail, are visible in the vicinity.
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FORT FRED STEELE
Wyoming
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Location: Carbon County, about 2 miles north of
I-80 and 15 miles east of Rawlins, in the community of Fort Fred
Steele.
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Like Forts Bridger, Sanders, and D. A. Russell, Wyo.,
Fort Fred Steele protected workers building the Union Pacific Railroad
through Indian country. The fort also partially filled the void created
north of the North Platte River by the abandonment of Forts Phil Kearny,
Reno, and C. F. Smith in the summer of 1868. Col. Richard I. Dodge's
command founded Fort Fred Steele that same summer on the west bank of
the North Platte River just opposite a new trestle bridge. Once the
construction crews moved westward, the troops forwarded rail supplies
and guarded part of the Wyoming stretch of track, maintained law and
order among the settlers, chased cattle rustlers and outlaws, watched
over the nearby Oregon-California Trail, and supported military
operations against the Indians in the region.
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Fort Fred Steele was one of the
posts founded to guard crews constructing the Union Pacific Railroad.
The railroad station is pictured here in 1886, the same year the fort
was abandoned and long after the railroad had moved west. (Southern
Pacific Railroad Museum Collection) |
The fort figured prominently in the Ute uprising of
1879 in Colorado, when Indians at the White River Agency went on a
rampage. In response to Agent Nathan C. Meeker's request for aid, Maj.
Thomas T. Thornburgh organized an expedition from Fort Fred Steele but
met disaster in the Battle of Milk Creek, Colo. A relief expedition
under Col. Wesley Merritt proceeded from Fort D. A. Russell via Fort
Fred Steele to the White River Agency to put down the rebellion and
remained over the winter. In January 1880 General Crook used the fort to
direct logistical support of the operations at the agency. After its
abandonment in 1886, local residents occupied it.
Ownership of the site is divided among the Union
Pacific Rail road, whose tracks traverse the central part of the site
atop a high earth grade, and various private individuals. Existing
buildings are in fair condition despite weathering, neglect,
vandalization, and in numerous instances postmilitary occupation. They
include the commanding officer's quarters, two large warehouses,
barracks, stone powder magazine, and some smaller structures.
Foundations and earth mounds mark the location of other structures.
Soldier grave markers are extant in the cemetery, on a small hillock
over looking the fort site, though the Army has relocated the bodies.
Civilian burials date from 1868.
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FORT RENO (Fort Connor)
Wyoming
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Location: Johnson County, about 27 miles northeast
of Kaycee, approximately 1 mile east of an unimproved road at a point
some 10 miles from its junction with a paved road some one-half mile
northwest of Sussex. Make local inquiry.
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Brig. Gen. Patrick E. Connor founded Fort Connor in
the summer of 1865 on the north bank of the Powder River about 180 miles
northwest of Fort Laramie, Wyo., in hostile Sioux country as a temporary
base for his Powder River Expedition. In November the Army renamed the
post Fort Reno. The following summer Col. Henry B. Carrington, laying
out the Bozeman Trail defense line, added blockhouses and bastions at
two corners of the cottonwood stockade and strengthened the garrison.
For 2 years Fort Reno, as well as newly founded Forts C. F. Smith and
Phil Kearny, Wyo., protected the trail as best it could from the
continual attacks of the Sioux Red Cloud and his Cheyenne and Arapaho
allies. In 1868 the Indians burned all three forts when the Army
evacuated them in accordance with the Fort Laramie Treaty.
This site should not be confused with that of
Cantonment Reno (Fort McKinney No. 1) (1876-78), a temporary supply base
General Crook's men built of dugouts and a few cottonwood huts about 3
miles to the north during the 1876 offensive that followed Custer's
defeat. In 1878 the Army relocated this post, subsequently known as Fort
McKinney No. 2, about 40 miles to the northwest on the north bank of the
Clear Fork of the Powder River. It was inactivated in 1894.
The Fort Reno (Connor) site, occasionally flooded by
the Powder River, is in private ownership and is indicated by a granite
marker. Mounds of earth apparently trace the outline of the stockade and
blockhouses. Bits of debris may be the result of ranch operations rather
than fort remains. The Cantonment Reno (Fort McKinney No. 1) site, about
3 miles northward on the same side of the Powder River nearly opposite
the mouth of the Dry Fork, also in private ownership, is not marked and
is almost impossible to find without a local guide. Surface evidence is
fairly extensive. The Fort McKinney No. 2 site, on U.S. 16, some 3 miles
west of Buffalo, Wyo., is occupied today by the Wyoming Soldiers' and
Sailors' Home. The old fort hospital, moved from its original location,
is today the visitors' house of the home. All that otherwise remains of
the post are old mule and cavalry stables, the latter now used as a
garage, as well as some cellar ruins of other buildings.
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FORT WASHAKIE
Wyoming
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Location: Fremont County, town of Fort
Washakie.
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This fort, whose history provides a notable example
of amicable Indian-white relations on the frontier, is one of the few
named for an Indian. The distinguished Shoshoni leader Washakie was a
friend of the white man and kept his tribe at peace throughout the
Indian wars. He and many of his people served with distinction as Army
scouts, joining cause with the Crows against the Sioux, Cheyennes, and
Arapahos. Still on the Army rolls at the time of his death in 1900,
apparently at the age of 102, he was the only full-blooded Indian ever
to have been buried with military honors. A Christian, he had been
baptized in 1897.
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Shoshoni Chief Washakie. He and
his people were friends of the white man. (photo Baker and Johnston,
Smithsonian Institution) |
Fort Washakie (1869-1909) was located at two
different sites. The first (1869-71), when the fort was a subpost of
Fort Bridger, was along the Popo Agie River on the site of Lander, Wyo.
The second was at the junction of the north and south forks of the
Little Wind River. The post's major mission was protecting the Shoshonis
on the Wind River Reservation, created in 1868, from their wandering
Indian enemies. The post also guarded miners in the nearby Sweetwater
region until Camp Stambaugh (1870-78) was established to the south
between Atlantic City and Miners Delight. During the 1870's and 1880's,
Fort Washakie also served as a supply base and springboard for
expeditions entering Yellowstone National Park, established in 1872, and
for gold seekers and others heading into the Bighorn country.
Since the Army departed, the fort has been the agency
headquarters for the Wind River Indian Reservation, occupied since 1877
by Arapahos as well as Shoshonis. Many of the old fort buildings,
constructed of adobe, frame, and stone and including the old frame
barracks and adobe guardhouse, are still used by the agency and are
intermingled with modern structures. Chief Washakie's grave is in the
former military cemetery about 4 miles south of the fort. A marker in
downtown Lander indicates the location of the first fort, when it was
known as Camp C. C. Augur and Camp Brown.
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GRATTAN FIGHT SITE
Wyoming
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Location: Goshen County, between an unimproved
road and the North Platte River, about 3 miles west of Lingle.
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Only slightly more than a century ago an incident
occurred at this site that marked the beginning of 3-1/2 decades of
intermittent warfare on the northern Plains. On a summer afternoon in
1854 a young lieutenant, belligerently seeking to arrest a Sioux Indian
for a trivial offense, forced a fight. By sundown all the troops but one
were dead. An enraged American public, unaware of the actual
circumstances, demanded action. The Sioux and other northern tribes,
with whom relations rapidly deteriorated, made numerous raids along the
Oregon-California Trail. The next year Col. William S. Harney led a
punitive expedition (1855-56) onto the Plains from Fort Kearny, Nebr.
The Indian wars, a bitter, generation-long struggle, had begun.
During the years just preceding the Grattan Fight,
despite the waves of settlers passing west over the trail, the northern
Plains Indians had been relatively peaceful. In July and early August
1854 about 600 lodges of Brule, Miniconjou, and Oglala Sioux, as well as
those of a few Northern Cheyennes, dotted the North Platte River Valley
for several miles east of Fort Laramie. This large concentration of
Indians, which could easily have overwhelmed the fort's feeble garrison,
was impatiently awaiting the delayed annuity issue to which they were
entitled by the Fort Laramie Treaty (1851). On August 18 a Miniconjou
named High Forehead, visiting Conquering Bear's Brule camp, shot and ate
a cow belonging to a Mormon emigrant.
That same day Conquering Bear visited Fort Laramie's
commanding officer, Lt. Hugh B. Fleming, and offered to make amends.
Rejecting these overtures, he decided to arrest High Forehead, an act in
violation of existing treaties. The commander assigned the mission to
John L. Grattan, a rash 24-year-old lieutenant fresh out of West Point,
and gave him broad discretionary powers.
The next afternoon Grattan, an interpreter named
Lucien Auguste, and 29 infantrymen set out with a wagon and two small
artillery pieces. They stopped first at the Gratiot Houses fur trading
post and then at James Bordeaux' trading post, 300 yards from the Brule
camp and 8 miles southeast of Fort Laramie. Over Grattan's protests, at
both places the interpreter, who had become intoxicated, abused and
threatened loitering Indians.
A series of conferences between Grattan and
Conquering Bear and other chiefs culminated in front of High Forehead's
lodge, where Grattan finally moved his troops despite the warnings of
the alarmed Bordeaux. The chiefs made new offers to pay for the cow,
pleaded with the unyielding Grattan to postpone action until the Indian
agent arrived, and continued to urge the obstinate High Forehead to
surrender. Conquering Bear explained that High Forehead was a guest in
his village and was not subject to his authority. Aggravating matters
was the arrival of some impetuous young Oglala warriors, who in defiance
of Grattan's orders had hurried down from their village. Distrusting
Auguste's translation of what was being said and seeking to avoid a
clash, Conquering Bear tried but failed to obtain the translation
services of Bordeaux. As the situation became more tense, the Brule
women and children fled from the camp toward the river.
At some point a few shots were fired and an Indian
fell, but the chiefs cautioned the warriors not to reciprocate.
Convinced nevertheless of the need for an even greater show of force,
Grattan ordered his men to fire a volley. Conquering Bear slumped to the
ground mortally wounded. Arrows flew. Once Grattan fell, his command
panicked and fought a running battle back along the Oregon-California
Trail. Finally the mounted Indians, forcing the foot soldiers onto level
ground, overwhelmed them. All died except for one mortally wounded man
who managed to make it back to Fort Laramie.
The Indian chiefs, feeling that the Great White
Father would realize that the soldiers had been partly at fault and
would forgive the Indians for the battle but not an attack on Fort
Laramie, restrained their warriors. Within a few days they did, however,
ransack Gratiot Houses of its goods as a substitute for their annuities
and then departed from the North Platte River Valley. Life at the fort
slowly settled into the familiar routine, but the old security was
gone.
The site, privately owned and used for ranch
operations, is marked by a stone monument, on the north side of the
road. Extensive modern alterations of the terrain for irrigation
purposes prevent the identification of the exact positions of the
participants in the fight. The site of the cairn, where the enlisted men
are buried, is about 200 yards west of the probable site of the Bordeaux
trading post, marked by ground debris. Grattan's body is interred at
Fort Leavenworth, Kans. The likely site of Gratiot Houses, also debris
covered, is located a few rods from the river about a quarter mile east
of the headgates of the Gratiot Irrigation Ditch.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitec19.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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