



|
Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
 |
BEECHER'S ISLAND BATTLEFIELD
Colorado
|

|
Location: Yuma County, adjacent to the town of
Beecher Island.
|
|
In an indecisive but bitterly fought battle at this
site, a force of about 50 frontiersmen under Maj. George A. Forsyth
engaged more than 1,000 Sioux and Cheyennes, led by Roman Nose, Pawnee
Killer, and other chiefs. Pursued all the way from Fort Wallace, Kans.,
on September 16, 1868, the Indians turned on the troops, who entrenched
themselves on a small sandy island in the Arikaree River. During the
9-day siege and the repeated Indian charges that followed, volunteers
worked their way through enemy lines to obtain reinforcements from Fort
Wallace, 125 miles away, who drove off the Indians. Casualties were
heavy on both sides. Half the soldiers were wounded, Forsyth four times.
The dead included Roman Nose and Lt. Frederick W. Beecher, after whom
the island came to be named. Immediately after this battle, Maj. Gen.
Philip H. Sheridan began his 1868-69 winter campaign.
The island has long since disappeared because of
shifting river channels, but a large monument near the post office at
the town of Beecher Island commemorates the battle.
 |
Frederic Remington's version of
the Battle of Beecher's Island. (Jeff C. Dykes) |
 |
BENT'S NEW FORT
Colorado
|

|
Location: Bent County, on a secondary road about
1-1/2 miles south of U.S. 50, some 7 miles west of Lamar. Make local
inquiry.
|
|
William Bent abandoned Bent's Old Fort in 1849 and
moved 38 miles down the Arkansas River to the Big Timbers locality, a
favorite Cheyenne and Arapaho campground. There he erected a temporary
log stockade on the north bank of the river and resumed trading. In
1852-53 he replaced the stockade with a permanent stone structure that
came to be known as Bent's New Fort. Resembling Bent's Old Fort, but
smaller, it consisted of 12 rooms surrounding a central courtyard. It
had parapets but no bastions, and cannon were placed on the corners of
the roof. The walls were 16 feet high. The fort was never a success, for
by the time of its founding the Indian trade was rapidly decreasing.
Emigrants, gold seekers, and increased freight traffic had made the
Arkansas River a main-traveled highway. They felled the cottonwoods at
Big Timbers and frightened away the game.
In 1860 troops began construction of Fort Wise (Fort
Lyon No. 1) a mile southwest of Bent's post. Bent leased it to the Army
and moved upriver to the mouth of the Purgatoire River, where he built a
wooden stockade and lived until his death in 1869. The Army, which used
Bent's New Fort as a commissary warehouse, erected extensive earthworks
around it and diamond-shaped gun emplacements at the corners. In 1867
soldiers built Fort Lyon No. 2 near present Las Animas, Colo., and
abandoned Fort Lyon No. 1 and Bent's New Fort.
The buildings of Bent's New Fort disintegrated many
years ago, but their outlines are visible. Earthwork remains are
substantial. A marker indicates the site, in private ownership.
 |
Restored barracks at Fort
Garland State Historical Monument. (photo by Robert M. Utley,
National Park Service) |
 |
FORT GARLAND
Colorado
|

|
Location: Costilla County, town of Fort
Garland.
|
|
In southern Colorado near La Veta Pass and an Indian
trail running between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas River Valley, this
fort (1858-83) replaced Fort Massachusetts, 6 miles to the north. The
new post protected settlers in the San Luis Valley and warded off Ute
and Apache attacks on the roads running south to Taos. During the Civil
War, the fort was an assembly point for Colorado Volunteers; and the
garrison participated in the Battle of Glorieta Pass, N. Mex. (1862),
which turned back the Confederate invasion from Texas. In 1866-67 Col.
"Kit" Carson was the commander. In the former year, accompanied by Lt.
Gen. William T. Sherman, he held a council with the Ute chief Ouray.
This, along with concessions that Carson gained for the tribe in an 1868
treaty, was instrumental in keeping it peaceful, even during the Ute
uprising of 1879 in western Colorado. Nonetheless, at that time
reinforcements arrived at Fort Garland, and 2 years later troops removed
the local Utes to Utah.
Today a State historical monument, Fort Garland
features seven restored buildings: five officers' quarters, the cavalry
barracks, and the infantry barracks. Of adobe construction, they have
flat, earth-covered roofs and viga ceilings. A large museum is divided
among the buildings. An eighth structure, the sutler's store, not owned
by the State, is a private residence.
 |
Southern Ute chiefs and
Government officials in Washington, D.C., about 1874. Chief Ouray is
second from right, front row. (Colorado Historical
Society) |
 |
FORT LYON NO. 1 (Fort Wise)
Colorado
|

|
Location: Bent County, on a secondary road about
1-1/2 miles south of U.S. 50, some 8 miles west of Lamar. Make local
inquiry.
|
|
Established by Colorado Volunteers in 1860 on the
north bank of the Arkansas River a mile upstream from Bent's New Fort,
Fort Lyon No. 1 was known as Fort Wise until 1862. Two years after its
founding the garrison marched into New Mexico and helped defeat a
Confederate force from Texas in the Battle of Glorieta Pass. During the
rest of the Civil War the post was the principal guardian of the
Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail. Cooperating with detachments from
Fort Larned, Kans., and Fort Union, N. Mex., its troops escorted traffic
along the upper reaches of the Arkansas to Raton Pass.
The fort was also involved with the uprising of
Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos in Colorado that reached a climax in
1864. Three years before, a few chiefs, pacified by Col. Edwin V.
Sumner's 1857 campaign, had concluded the Treaty of Fort Wise.
Guaranteeing peace along the Santa Fe Trail and in the region, they
relinquished all the territory assigned to their tribes by the Fort
Laramie Treaty (1851) and promised to settle on a reservation in the
area of the upper Arkansas. But most of the other chiefs, refusing to be
bound by the treaty, kept on hunting buffalo between the Platte and the
Arkansas. Miners and settlers continued to flow into Colorado, whose
Regular garrisons were serving in the Civil War. In the spring of 1864
the predictable collision occurred. Throughout the summer, warriors
raided roads and settlements and practically halted traffic on the Santa
Fe Trail. Coloradans obtained their revenge at Sand Creek, only 40 miles
down the Arkansas from Fort Lyon No. 1, where a group of peaceful
Indians who thought they were under the post's protection were
slaughtered. Infuriated, the Plains Indians launched a full-scale
war.
During the summer of 1867, because of floods,
unhealthful conditions, and the decreasing supply of timber, the Army
relocated the fort 20 miles upstream and redesignated it as Fort Lyon
No. 2. For a time, however, a Kansas City-Santa Fe line used the
dirt-roofed stone buildings at the first Fort Lyon as a stage
station.
All that remains at the site, in private ownership
but indicated by a stone marker, are traces of the building
outlines.
 |
FORT LYON NO. 2
Colorado
|

|
Location: Bent County, on County 183, about 5
miles northeast of Las Animas.
|
|
The successor of Fort Lyon No. 1, this fort (1867-89)
was also located on the Arkansas River, on a bluff about 2 miles below
the mouth of the Purgatoire. By the time of its activation the need for
protection of the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail had lessened,
the Confederate threatened, and the focus in the Indian campaigns
shifted to Kansas and Indian Territory. Troops from the fort, however,
did play a small part in General Sheridan's 1868-69 campaign. One of the
three participating columns, led by Maj. Eugene A. Carr, moved
southeastward in brutal weather, founded a supply base on the North
Canadian River some 100 miles west of Camp Supply, Okla., reached the
Canadian River, and turned back without ever having seen any
Indians.
The Navy utilized the fort in the 1906-22 period, and
since 1934 it has been a Veterans' Administration hospital. Various
adobe and stone structures, some remodeled and used by the Veterans'
Administration but all in good condition, date from the 1860's. Among
them are the commissary building, several officers quarters,
storehouses, and the commanding officer's residence. The building where
"Kit" Carson died has been altered and now serves as a chapel.
 |
FORT SEDGWICK AND JULESBURG
Colorado
|

|
Location: Sedgwick County. The site of Fort
Sedgwick is just off an unimproved road slightly north of I-80 and south
of U.S. 138, about 1-1/2 miles southeast of Ovid. The site of the
original Julesburg is about 1 mile to the east of the fort site.
|
|
Early in 1865 this fort (1864-71) and town on the
south bank of the South Platte felt the wrath generated among the
southern Plains Indians by the Sand Creek Massacre (November 1864). The
fort had been founded during the Indian uprisings in Colorado that
peaked in the summer of 1864 and was responsible for protecting
settlers, emigrants, and the overland route to Denver. The town of
Julesburg, just to the east, was a stage and freight station. On January
7, 1865, a thousand Cheyennes, Arapahos, and Sioux attacked the weakly
garrisoned post, but failed to take it and sacked the town. A few weeks
later, on February 18, they again pillaged the town, this time burning
it to the ground. Thereafter the focus of hostilities shifted north of
the Platte. No attempt was made to rebuild Julesburg, and it
subsequently occupied three different sites nearby, including that of
the present town.
The privately owned sites of the adobe fort and the
first Julesburg are located in plowed fields. No remains of either are
extant. A stone monument marks the original Julesburg site. The modern
town contains the Julesburg Historical Museum, operated by the Fort
Sedgwick Historical Society. It interprets the history of the fort and
the towns.
 |
MEEKER (NATHAN C.) HOME
Colorado
|

|
Location: Weld County, 9th Avenue at 13th Street,
city of Greeley.
|
|
 |
Nathan C. Meeker, idealistic
Indian agent, killed in 1879 by his rebellious Ute charges. (photo by
W. G. Chamberlain, Denver Public Library, Western
Collection) |
This was the residence of Nathan C. Meeker,
idealistic founder of the city of Greeley, who later died a martyr's
death as an Indian agent. Born in 1817 in Euclid, Ohio, he early became
a wanderer around the East. Changing vocations often, he worked as a
journalist, author, social reformer, teacher, and businessman. In 1865
he joined Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, eventually becoming
its agricultural editor. Like Greeley, Meeker had a deep interest in the
West, expressed in his book Life in the West (1866). While on a
newspaper trip to the Rocky Mountain region in 1869, he evolved a plan
to organize an agricultural colony there. On his return to the East
later that year, supported by Greeley, he launched his Union Colony of
Colorado and recruited 200 colonists.
The next year Meeker set out to found Greeley, an
experimental cooperative community, in northeastern Colorado. After
several false starts, it succeeded. Despite his wanderlust, Meeker
stayed there for 8 years. To repay debts he had incurred and to confirm
his belief that agriculture could bring self-sufficiency and prosperity
to the Indians, as well as a better adjustment to the ways of the
whites, at the age of 60 he enthusiastically obtained a position as
Indian agent at the White River Agency, Colo. But the next year his Ute
charges murdered him, and his family returned to their home in
Greeley.
The two-story home, completed in the year 1871 and a
city-operated museum since 1929, is still essentially in its original
condition, except for the addition of a kitchen. In 1959 extensive
restoration took place. At that time the house was equipped with
furnishings, some of them dating to the 1870's and belonging to the
Meeker family.
 |
Nathan C. Meeker Home.
(Greeley Municipal Museums Department) |
 |
MEEKER MASSACRE SITE
Colorado
|

|
Location: Rio Blanco County, just off Colo. 64,
about 3 miles west of Meeker.
|
|
The Ute uprising of 1879 began at this site, the
location of the White River Agency and the scene of the Meeker Massacre.
With the possible exception of the Ghost Dance outbreak of the Sioux in
1890, the massacre was probably the most violent expression of Indian
resentment toward the reservation system. The agency had been founded in
1873 for several bands of Utes, who had agreed in a treaty that year to
settle on a reservation. Five years later Nathan C. Meeker, founder of
the city of Greeley, assumed the duties of Indian agent. Resisting his
undiplomatic and stubborn efforts to make them farm, raise stock,
discontinue their pony racing and hunting forays, and send their
children to school, as well as resenting settler encroachment on their
reservation and Indian Bureau mismanagement, the nomadic Utes revolted.
Assaulted by a subchief during a petty quarrel, Meeker called for
troops. On September 29, 1879, before they arrived, the Indians attacked
the agency, burned the buildings, and killed Meeker and nine of his
employees. Meeker's wife, daughter, and another girl were held as
captives for 23 days. After the massacre, relief columns from Forts Fred
Steele and D. A. Russell, Wyo., defeated the Utes in the Battle of Milk
Creek, Colo., and ended the uprising.
The site, indicated by a wooden marker on the south
side of the highway, is in a privately owned meadow on the north side of
the White River. A few traces of building foundations reveal the
location of the Indian agency. A monument indicates the spot where
Meeker died.
 |
The Meeker Massacre, rendered by
an unknown artist. (Colorado Historical Society) |
 |
MILK CREEK BATTLEFIELD
Colorado
|

|
Location: Moffat County, on an unimproved road,
about 20 miles northeast of Meeker.
|
|
Following the Meeker Massacre, the Utes ambushed a
column of 150 troops under Maj. Thomas T. Thornburgh at this site on the
northern edge of the White River Reservation, approximately 18 miles
from the Indian agency. The soldiers had marched south from Fort Fred
Steele, Wyo., in answer to Meeker's plea for help. Forming a wagon
corral and sending out a messenger with a call for aid, they held out
from September 29 until October 5, 1879. During that time, 35 black
cavalrymen, based at Fort Lewis, Colo., broke through the Indian line to
reinforce their comrades-in-arms. A relief expedition of 350 men led by
Col. Wesley Merritt from Fort D. A. Russell, Wyo., finally lifted the
siege and rounded up the hostiles. Army casualties were 13 dead,
including Major Thornburgh, and 43 wounded. The Government imprisoned
several of the Ute leaders, and placed the tribe on a new reservation,
in Utah.
The battlefield, situated in a brush-lined canyon,
appears today much as it did in 1879. A monument bears the names of the
dead soldiers.
 |
SUMMIT SPRINGS BATTLEFIELD
Colorado
|

|
Location: Straddling the Logan-Washington county
line, on an unimproved road, about 10 miles southeast of Atwood.
|
|
The Battle of Summit Springs represented the
culmination of General Sheridan's 1868-69 campaign. Maj. Eugene A. Carr,
commanding five companies of the 5th Cavalry from Fort McPherson, Nebr.,
and 150 Pawnee scouts under Maj. Frank North and Capt. Luther North,
guided by "Buffalo Bill" Cody, were pursuing Chief Tall Bull and his
Cheyenne "Dog Soldiers," who had been plundering settlements in Kansas
and eastern Colorado. On July 11, 1869, the troops surprised the
Cheyennes at Summit Springs, killed 50 of them, including Tall Bull, and
captured 117. Only one cavalryman was wounded.
The battlefield, privately owned pastureland, is
indicated by a stone marker near the springs from which the battle took
its name.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitec3.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
|