FORT LARAMIE PARK HISTORY  1834-1977
(National Park Service).

One of the most memorable shrines in Western America is to be found in Eastern Wyoming, at the junction of the Laramie and North Platte Rivers. Here preserved as a National Historic Site are the restored remains of Old Fort Laramie, 1834-1890. Perhaps no other place equals its star role in the long epic of frontier history. Few others equal it as a vivid reminder of a heroic past.
Serving successively as log stockade, adobe trading post, and evolving military post, Fort Laramie was a classic setting for the colorful pageant of the West. Explorers, trappers, traders, missionaries, emigrants, freighters, Pony Express riders, stage drivers, cowboys, and homesteaders, as well as soldiers and Indians, all perceived Fort Laramie whether camp-ground, way-station, provision point, fortification, or temporary home as a unique island of civilization in the Big Sky wilderness, where the Great Plains merge with the Rocky Mountains.
The key to Fort Laramie's importance was its strategic location on the great central continental migration corridor via the Platte and North Platte Rivers to South Pass. By tradition this is most commonly known as the Oregon Trail.

FUR TRAPPERS DISCOVER THE OREGON TRAIL
American and French-Canadian beaver hunters were the first men of European origin to explore the headwaters of the North Platte. The first visit to the mouth of Laramie Fork that can be documented was that of seven men of the American Fur Company led by Robert Stuart, taking dispatches from the new post of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River to St. Louis, by way of Jackson's Hole, South Pass, and the Platte. On December 22, 1812 Stuart noted in his journal that here "a well wooded stream apparently of considerable magnitude came in from the South West." He also referred to buffalo, antelope, and wild horses in this region. The Stuart party, compelled to winter near present Torrington, Wyoming, is credited with the effective discovery of South Pass and the near-level Platte River route which led to this natural mountain gateway.
Several geographical names attest to the early infiltration here of French-Canadians, among them one "Goche" who has become immortalized as the namesake of present Goshen County. Another was a shadowy figure commonly identified as Jacques Laramee or Laramie.
According to an 1831 report by Indian Agent John Dougherty at Fort Leavenworth this was "J. Loremy, a free man" killed in 1821 by Arapahoe Indians "on the Platte", presumably near the river and later fort which now bear his name. The euphonious "Laramie" has also been bestowed on other features of Wyoming, notably the county which contains the State Capital, the city which boasts the State University, and the mountain which dominates the horizon west of the fort.
In 1823 Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, and other enterprising Americans in the employ of William Ashley of St. Louis, going over land from the Upper Missouri, rediscovered South Pass and the lush beaver country in Green River drainage, west of the Continental Divide. In 1824 a small party of "mountain men" under Thomas Fitzpatrick cached furs near Independence Rock and hiked down the Platte to Fort Atkinson on the Missouri River (north of present Omaha), arriving in scarecrow condition. Their glowing account of beaver riches in the Rockies and the merits of the rediscovered Platte River route prompted Ashley to mount an expedition up the Platte to explore the Utah Canyon country, 1824-1825. In the spring, at Henry's Fork of the Green, he inaugurated the large-scale exploitation of the beaver which became known as the rendezvous system. Thereafter for 16 years St. Louis traders would send supply trains up the Platte to the annual
rendezvous of the trappers and traders for purposes of riotous celebration and trade, most often in the valleys of the Upper Green or Wind Rivers. In 1826 the first wheeled vehicle, a small mounted cannon in the caravan of Captain Benjamin Bonneville, rumbled past the future fort site en route to a rendezvous at Salt take. That same year Ashley sold out to a famous trio, Jed Smith, William Sublette and David Jackson, who made history with their heroic explorations of the Far West while captaining fur brigades.
In 1830 Sublette brought the first wagon caravan up the Platte, instead of the usual pack train. At Wind River he and his partners sold out to Bridger, Fitzpatrick and others, who were soon confronted with competition from other outfits, principally Astor's powerful American Fur Company. In 1832 William Sublette and Robert Campbell formed a trading partnership, contracting to supply others at the rendezvous. In 1834 they built the first Fort on the Laramie.

FORT WILLIAM, THE FIRST FORT LARAMIE
Sublette and Campbell saw hand-writing on the wall. With intense competition the supply of beaver pelts was declining; at the same time silk hats were replacing beaver hats on Eastern markets. The salvation of the fur trade would be the vast buffalo herds of the Plains, and this dictated the need for a strong fixed post for the storage of robes. The choice of a site for the new establishment seemed foreordained. "Laramais' Point," named in their trading license, had many natural advantages as well as being roughly equi-distant from the Missouri River steamboat landings and the Upper Green River. This inspired the birth of Fort Laramie, which would soon become the capital of a fur trade empire, rivalled in importance only by Bent's Fort on the Santa Fe Trail, and Fort Union on the Upper Missouri.
On May 30, 1834, Sublette and company reached "Laramee's Fork." On the following day they laid the foundation logs. One of the party, William Anderson, reveals that the name "Fort William" was in honor of the common name of himself and Sublette. En route to St. Louis later in the season Lucien Fontenelle reported to Pierre Chouteau Jr. of the American Fur Company the completion here of a substantial palisaded fort as a "central place for the Sioux and Cheyenne trade in buffalo robes."
In 1835 there were several noteworthy events at Fort William or "Fort William on the Laramie." Among those arriving with the supply train that spring were the famed missionaries Marcus Whitman and Samuel Parker who referred to "the fort of the Black Hills," an allusion to the dark forest cover of distant Laramie Peak. The scandalized Reverend Parker also mentions the free use of "ardent spirits," the result of which "not infrequently terminates with a catastrophe of some kind." He also describes a visit by 2,000 Oglala Sioux who brought skins, moccasins, and belts to exchange for knives, awls, combs and vermillion, and "imitated brute beasts" in performing their buffalo dance.
Also in 1835 Sublette and Campbell sold Fort William to Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick and Milton Sublette. Within a year these veteran mountain men were persuaded to relinquish their interest to the American Fur Company, which would thereafter be represented locally by such fur trade stalwarts as Fontenelle, James Bordeaux, and Andrew Drips. Pierre Chouteau, Jr. at St Louis headquarters became the guiding spirit of this famous enterprise.
The 1836 overland caravan, led by Fitzpatrick, escorted the first white women to cross the continent, Narcissa Whitman and Elizabeth Spalding, missionary wives who enjoyed the hospitality of the fort. They considered chairs with "buffalo skin bottoms" a special luxury. At the Green River Rendezvous the genteel ladies caused a sensation among the wild trappers and Indians.
In 1837 Sir William Drummond Stewart, a Scotch nobleman, was a guest, accompanied by the artist, Alfred Jacob Miller, whose sketches constitute our only pictorial record of Fort William. In his notes Miller describes the fort as of quadrangular form, with block houses at diagonal corners to sweep the fronts in case of attack.
Over the front entrance is a large block house in which is placed a cannon. The interior of the fort is about 150 feet square, surrounded by small cabins whose roofs reach within 3 feet of the top of the palisades against which they abut. The Indians encamp in great numbers here 3 or 4 times a year, bringing peltries to be exchanged for dry goods, tobacco, beads, and alcohol.
The Indians have a mortal horror of the 'big gun' which rests in the block house, as they have had experience of its prowess and witnessed the havoc produced by its loud 'talk.' They conceive it to be only asleep and have a wholesome dread of its being waked up.
The view [of the interior, reproduced herewith] is from the great entrance looking west and embraces more than half the court. . . Indians and traders. . . gather here from all quarters; from the Gila at the south, the Red River at the north, and the Columbia River west. . . There are Canadian trappers. . . Kentuckians, Missourians, and Down Easters. A saturnalia is held the first day and some excesses committed. But after this the trading goes briskly forward.
Later visitors of record include famous mountain men like Kit Carson, Joe Meek and Osborne Russell, the explorer-missionary Father De Smet, and Augustus Johann Sutter, a Swiss whose ranch on the Sacramento River would become the scene of James Marshall's electrifying discovery of California gold in 1848.

FORT JOHN, THE SECOND FORT LARAMIE
At the time of its founding Fort William enjoyed a monopoly of the trade in the North Platte region. There was no serious threat of competition until 1841 when, much to the consternation of the proprietors, a new fort was built right under their noses, so to speak. This was adobe-walled Fort Platte, on the right bank of the North Platte, just three-fourths of a mile above its junction with the Laramie, almost within rifle-shot of Fort William or, according to several accounts, "about a mile apart." The founder of this rival emporium was brash young Lancaster P. Lupton, who had built the first fort on the South Platte, in present Colorado.
The appearance of this obnoxious neighbor, coupled with the rotting of the log palisades, prompted the American Fur Company to abandon Fort William and build a new establishment nearby. This was a massive structure of adobe or sun-dried brick in the New Mexico style that had already been adapted by Lupton, and involved the importation of native labor from the Southwest. The time of construction is fixed by an eyewitness, missionary Joseph Williams who in the summer of 1841 says that he "went up to a new fort that they were building called Fort Johns [sic]". This name, honoring John B. Sarpy, an officer of the company, was used consistently in official correspondence but, as in the case of Fort William, the name Fort Laramie prevailed in popular usage.
For a few years rivalry between the two posts was intense. Both sent out trading parties to distant Indian camps with goods, such as blankets, tobacco, mirrors, bells, and glass beads. However, the principal trade item was alcohol transported in wooden casks lashed to pack mules, and dispensed in diluted form in tin cups. It was illegal to sell liquor to Indians but this law was flouted in the cut-throat competition.
For a while both of these bizarre establishments thrived from the trade in buffalo robes, and each spring they would send forth to St. Louis wagon caravans or flat-boat flotillas down the Platte. Navigation of this fickle stream, which depended upon the spring rise from melting mountain snow, was a treacherous business, and cargoes commonly had to be beached and cached or retrieved by wagons. The year 1845 was a particularly bad year for boats. This coupled with the rigors of the 600-mile overland trip to Missouri River posts via the Platte, led the company to develop a new 300-mile wagon road northeastward to Fort Pierre, in present South Dakota, where company steamboats would pick up the cargo. Another significant development that year was the abandonment of Fort Platte by Pratte and Cabanne, Lupton's successors, leaving the field mainly to the American Fur Company.
There are a few eye-witness descriptions of Fort John, notably by Rufus Sage in 1841, Lieutenant John C. Fremont in 1846, and Captain Howard Stansbury in 1849, but the most vivid one is by the young Bostonian, historian Francis Parkman, whose visit there in 1846 is to be found in his classic work, The Oregon Trail:
Fort Laramie well-nigh monopolizes the Indian trade of this region. . . it suppresses all opposition. Here its officials rule with an absolute sway; the arm of the United States has little force, for when we were there the extreme outposts of her troops were about seven hundred miles to the eastward. The . . . fort. . . externally is of an oblong form. . . The roofs of the apartments within, which are built close to the walls, serve the purpose of banquette. Within, the fort is divided by a partition: on one side is the square area, surrounded by the storerooms, offices, and apartments of the inmates; on the other is the corral, a narrow place encompassed by the high clay walls, where at night or in the presence of dangerous Indians the horses and mules of the fort are crowded for safekeeping. The main entrance has two gates with an arched passage intervening. A little square window, high above the ground, opens laterally from an adjoining chamber into this passage; so that, when the inner gate is closed and barred, a person without may still hold communication with those within through this narrow aperture. This obviates the necessity of admitting suspicious Indians for purposes of trading into the body of the fort, for when danger is apprehended the inner gate is shut fast, and all traffic is carried on by means of the window.

EARLY MIGRATIONS TO OREGON AND UTAH
Prior to 1841 Fort Laramie visitors consisted exclusively of trappers and traders, Plains Indians, missionaries bound for the Northwest, and random adventurers. That year, however, saw the arrival of the Bidwell-Bartleson expedition, the first avowed settlers bound for the west coast. They were followed in 1842 by the White-Hastings expedition to Oregon, the journalist of which mentions "Fort Laramy, the great central trading post of the American Fur Company." Both of these expeditions utilized the services of Thomas Fitzpatrick, veteran mountain man, as guide.
Though Oregon (present Oregon, Washington, and Idaho) was still British territory, it was claimed by the United States, and Americans interested in settling there were spurred by stories of its natural wealth. The year 1843 saw the first great migration to Oregon, about 1,000 persons led by the zealous Marchus Whitman and Peter Burnett, who would become the first American governor of California. They crossed the swollen Laramie by improvised ferry, and obtained supplies at the post.
Another 1,000 Oregonians paused here to camp in 1844. Among them was James Clyman, one of Fitzpatrick's starving trappers who had visited the virgin site in 1824, and now beheld "the white battlments of Fort Larrimie."
The trickle of migration to Oregon became a respectable stream of 5,000 souls in 1845, and for twenty years thereafter Fort Laramie would witness the annual emigrant cavalcade, at times becoming a flood of humanity moving westward on wagon wheels. Camping, repairing equipment, buying provisions at the fort, and mingling with its swarthy employees and gaudily clad Indian customers became standard trail procedure.
In 1846 Edwin Bryant noted "two brass swivels" defending it's gate. He also observed that buffalo meat and venison formed the staple diet of fort personnel. Another emigrant party pausing at the fort that year was the Reed-Donner wagon train, destined for disaster in the snows of the Sierra Nevadas because of fatal misjudgements on their choice of routes west of South Pass. From the parapet of the fort Parkman observed the arrival of this ill-starred company, as well as the barbaric spectacle of Sioux Indian bands with naked warriors, gaily attired squaws, horse-drawn travois, and packs of noisy children.
In 1847 Brigham Young led his band of Mormon Pioneers (143 men, 3 women, 2 children, 72 wagons) west from Winter Quarters at Council Bluffs to the new Zion which became Salt Lake City. Fort Laramie was the only sign of civilization on their 1,000 mile journey. On June 1 Young and a delegation of elders crossed the Platte by their own expedition boat, explored the ruins of Fort Platte, and then visited Fort Laramie where they plied Bordeaux for information. Later they ferried the wagons over by rented flat-boat and, while the company rested and made repairs, clerk Thomas Bullock and official journalist William Clayton measured both adobe structures.
In addition to 2,000 Mormons who followed the Pioneers later in 1847 an estimated 5,000 non-Mormons travelled to Oregon. In 1848 there was a decline in the numbers of "gentiles" going to Oregon, but an upsurge of 4,000 "Saints" to Salt Lake.
There was a moderately brisk business with the emigrants in provisioning, ferrying, and exchange of stock and equipment, but the Indian trade at the fort continued to decline. Conditions were now ripe for the retirement of the American Fur Company from the scene, and the advent of a new owner better attuned to the music of Manifest Destiny.                 

FORT LARAMIE, THE U. S. ARMY, AND THE FORTY-NINERS

For some years the Government had considered establishing military posts along the Oregon Trail for the protection of emigrants, and the site at Laramie Fork had been recommended by Lieutenant Fremont. In December, 1845, such action was proposed by President James K. Polk and in May 1846 Congress approved "An Act to provide for raising a regiment of Mounted Riflemen, and for establishing military stations on the route to Oregon." Early in 1848 Fort Kearny was established on the south bank of the Platte near the head of Grand Island. Later that year news of the discovery of gold in California raced through the country like wildfire, and the resulting fevered preparations to trek westward the next spring increased the urgency of extending the chain of forts.
In March, 1849, Adjutant General Roger Jones directed General D. E. Twiggs at St. Louis to carry out establishment of a second post "at or near Fort Laramie, a trading station belonging to the American Fur Company." Lieutenant Daniel P. Woodbury of the Corps of Engineers was authorized to purchase the buildings of Fort Laramie "should he deem it necessary to do so." Companies A and E, Mounted Riflemen, and Company G, Sixth Infantry, were designated as the first garrison of the new post.
Major W. J. Sanderson with 4 officers and 58 men of Company E left Fort Leavenworth early in May and arrived at the Laramie on June 16 without incident. On June 27 he reported to the Adjutant-General that after making a thorough reconnaissance within a radius of 75 miles of the trading post he had found this to be the most eligible site and that at his request Lieutenant Woodbury had, on June 26, purchased Fort Laramie from Bruce Husband, agent of the American Fur Company, for $4,000.
On June 22 Major Osborne Cross and Private George Gibbs, with a contingent of Mounted Riflemen en route to take over Fort Hall on Snake River, in present Idaho, paused at Laramie Fork where they found Company E encamped opposite the adobe fort while Woodbury was scouting the territory. Both thought the situation there "forlorn and destitute of interest." However, Sanderson reported that good timber, limestone, hay and dry wood were readily available and that the Laramie River furnished abundant good water.
Company C, Mounted Rifles, consisting of 2 officers and 60 men, arrived at the post on July 26. On August 12 the two officers and 53 men of Company G, Sixth Infantry, completed the garrison and joined in the work of preparing quarters. While purchase of the adobe post provided the Army with temporary shelter for men and supplies, it was decrepit and infested with vermin. Before the ink was dry on the purchase agreement Sanderson had the entire command employed in cutting and hauling timber and burning lime. Stone was quarried and a horse-powered sawmill placed in operation. By winter a two-story block of officers quarters, a block of soldier quarters, a bakery, and two stables had been pushed to completion. Thus began Fort Laramie's forty years as a frontier command post of the United States Army.
The takeover, however fraught with portent, was but an incident in the epic of the Forty-Niners, the first wave of humanity magnetized by California gold. Fortunately some of these Argonauts kept diaries and from them we learn something of their reaction to this oasis of civilization in a region viewed at that time as "the Great American Desert."
Among those emigrants ahead of the Mounted Riflemen was William Kelly who was not impressed by the adobe fort: "My glowing fancy vanished before the wretched reality a miserable, cracked, dilapidated enclosure. . . some of it propped with beams of timber which an enemy had only to kick away and down would come the whole structure." J. G. Bruff, who has left one of the few emigrant sketches of the fort, owned that "it had suffered much from time and neglect." On the other hand Alonzo Delano was impressed by its "neat white-washed walls," while Joseph Wood thought that it presented "quite an imposing appearance as you approach it." Some noted that the place was inhabited mainly by Indian squaws and half-breed children, the families of employees absent on their annual trek eastward with furs.
On June 16 Isaac Wistar observed the coming of "a U. S. Government train of one company of Dragoons under Major Saunders." On that same day E. B. Farnham reported that "the sound of the cannon that was fired to greet the arrival of Major Sanderson came booming from the fort." Although sale of the fort was not consummated until the 26th, there must have been an early understanding for on June 17, reports Wistar, "the stars and stripes went up on the fort this morning, receiving our hearty cheers."
A total of 30,000 Forty-Niners has been estimated, every one of whom paused at or passed Fort Laramie, the only fixed establishment between Fort Kearny and Salt Lake City. By late July the emigrant tide had subsided when Colonel Aeneas Mackay, Quartermaster Corps, arrived for an inspection. As to the adobe fort he reported that, it is a good deal in decay and needs repairs. The the Engineers are employed in making and in addition have commenced the construction of quarters outside the walls. . .
Since my arrival here I have been much more favorably impressed with the advantage of this station than I had ever expected to be. . . In comparison with Fort Kearny it goes far beyond it in respect to almost every requisite. . . I have no doubt that it will become a most comfortable and desirable station.

THE GREAT CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH

The Forty-Niners were but the first wave of covered wagon emigrants stampeding toward the California mines. The following five years, 1850-1854, saw even larger hordes of Argonauts that all but swamped the little Army post on the Laramie. The biggest waves were in 1850 and 1852 when the migrant populations exceeded 50,000 each season. In the other three years of this frantic half-decade the combined numbers approximated another 50,000. From 1855 to 1858, when the California gold fever had subsided, there was perhaps a total of 25,000 pilgrims who rolled past the fort. Thus the total migration up the North Platte for the decade beginning in 1849 exceeded 200,000, a stupendous cavalcade witnessed by the tiny garrison.
Much of our knowledge of Fort Laramie in the 1850s is derived from journals and letters kept by a surprising number of emigrants themselves. Indeed, to a very large extent the history of the fort during this period is essentially its unique role in serving, in various ways, this transient population during its Exodus from "the States," across the vast wilderness known vaguely as Indian Territory, to "the Promised Land."
Fort Laramie was between 600 and 700 miles from the various Missouri River "jumping-off places," the exact distance depending on whether your point of origin was the Council Bluffs area (including Omaha after 1854), Table Rock (later Nebraska City), St. Joseph. or Independence, Missouri. While Fort Kearny on the Platte, where all trails converged, was viewed as the gateway to the Great Plains, Fort Laramie, with Laramie Peak looming in the distance, was looked upon as the gateway to the Mountains. Here one left the relatively level North Platte Valley of Nebraska and embarked on more rugged terrain, climbing toward South Pass on the Continental Divide. For many the brave little post on the Laramie was the only civilized place encountered between Fort Kearny and the West Coast. The sight, with its aura of settlement, uniformed soldiers, and American flag flying, aroused nostalgic emotions. Aware of the long dangerous journey across mountains and deserts ahead, leaving the fort seemed to one emigrant "like parting anew from all that was hallowed on earth."
The emigrant season at Fort Laramie was short, a maximum of 45 days. The timing of one's visit there hinged on two factors in an equation of survival. One left the Missouri River jumping-off place no sooner than the spring rains could green up the prairies for vital pasture for mules and oxen. This could be any time the last half of April. Near the other end of the journey was the barrier of the Sierra Nevadas; if you got
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Fort Laramie NHS: Park History (Part I)
there too late after your exhausting traverse of the arid Great Basin you could die of exposure in October snows. So you aimed to reach Hangtown (later Placerville) in the Mother Lode country no later than mid-September. Averaging 12 to 15 miles per day, including rest stops, over the total distance of near 2,000 miles, this meant a journey of four to five months, depending on the fortunes or misfortunes of the trail. This also meant that in 35 to 40 days from your starting point you should be at Fort Laramie, where you could rest, gird up, and regroup for the ordeal remaining. Thus the emigrant travel season at Fort Laramie was in the range of May 20 to the 4th of July, with the climax period the middle of June.
From 1849 to 1852 the dreaded Asiatic cholera was rampant, with thousands of victims buried in hastily dug shallow graves along the roadside between Fort Kearny and Fort Laramie. Also, there was a high casualty rate from trailside accidents, such as drownings, the careless use of firearms, and injuries from ornery mules and oxen. Because of overloads there was wholesale abandonment of excess baggage and equipment at Fort Laramie, and heavy wagons were often reduced to two-wheel carts. There was also the occasional abandonment of stricken fellow travellers, some of whom found a resting place in the old fort cemetery.
While some emigrants disposed of their surpluses here, others were in need of provisions, principally grain, flour, bread, and other staples, which the Post Quartermaster was able to supply some times in rationed quantities, and the post blacksmith did a land-office business. However, the busiest place was undoubtedly the post sutler's store where emigrant coins and valuables were exchanged for canned goods, liquor, patent medicines, lotions, muslin, subonnets, and other items which the emigrants needed for survival.
Another busy functionary at the fort was the post adjutant, who assigned details to the Officer of the Day to keep tabs on the migration. There is evidence that Guard Reports were kept which identified wagon trains, but unfortunately these priceless records have not survived. There was also an official emigrant register, evidently tabulated by soldiers inspecting or interrogating emigrants upon arrival. None of these registers have been found, either, but there is clear evidence of them in allusions by journalists. In 1850, for example, John Wood states that his Captain "gave a list of the numbers of cattle and wagons in our camp, a customary thing." In 1852 Bernard Bloemker states that "they stop every wagon, and check upon the numbers of oxen, horses, wagons and men in each." Several others give actual figures compiled. Henry Stine's entry for July 5, 1850 gives the season's totals to that date: "33,171 men, 803 women, 1,094 children, 7,472 mules, 30,616 oxen, 22,742 horses, 8,998 wagons, 5,270 cows."
No account of emigrant facilities at Fort Laramie would be complete without reference to the two main trail approaches and river crossings. The heaviest travel westward followed the south bank of the Platte and the North Platte, via Ash Hollow. Approaching Fort Laramie, this Oregon Trail mainline branched into several crossing points or fords, the principal one being downstream from the military post. In June the Laramie was apt to be in flood, causing wagons to capsize and emigrants to be swept to their deaths. There is evidence of a flat-boat shuttle across the Laramie on occasion, but most crossings were "cold turkey" until 1852 when a crude toll bridge was erected. However, a solid flood-proof bridge did not materialize until 1859.
All of the migration on the north bank of the Platte, out of Council Bluffs-Omaha, had to cross that dangerous river to reach the fort. Most everyone did that until 1850, under the impression that the only feasible route westward from that point was on the south side of the river. That year, however, the situation changed. A ferry was installed, which reduced the fatalities for those who crossed, but antagonize because of the toll charge. With this incentive, several emigrant parties blazed a tough but negotiable north side trail. By 1852 continuing on the north side became the accepted thing to do, although many "north-siders" would make side-trips to the fort to look for mail or supplies.

THE INDIAN PROBLEM: TREATY AND MASSACRE

Contrary to popular fiction writers the Plains Indians were not in the habit of attacking wagon trains, at least during the main period of migrations up the North Platte, 1841-1858. Because of chronic rumors in the border towns about the Indian menace, emigrants were wont to arm themselves heavily and practice the formation of defensive corrals, but actual sieges were rare. In practice the emigrants came to look upon the natives as, at worst, a nuisance because of their habits of begging and pilfering. At best they were a curious part of the scenery, particularly at Fort Laramie where they had tipi encampments, and buried their dead in tree scaffolds. As to the Indians, they stoically observed the white nation on wheels, hoping that the Platte region would soon revert to its accustomed solitude. But when the great migrations continued year after year, disrupting the buffalo herds, unrest smoldered and finally broke into flame.
In 1845 the Government had sent five companies of Dragoons under Colonel S. W. Kearny on a peaceful mission to Fort Laramie to impress the natives with American might, and to discourage depredations against Oregon Trail travellers. In 1847 Thomas Fitzpatrick, veteran of the fur trade and trail guide, became the first agent for Indians of "the Upper Platte and the Arkansas." Aware of the mounting tension he urged a treaty council to ensure the peace. Early in 1851 Congress appropriated $100,000 for such a purpose. This led to the great Fort Laramie Treaty Council in September of that year, unique in western annals because of its immense size and the number of different tribes from all over the Northern Plains, including hereditary enemies such as Cheyenne and Shoshone, Sioux and Crow, who attended peacefully. Superintendent of Indian Affairs D. D. Mitchell, Jim Bridger with the Shoshone, and the Catholic missionary Father De Smet with Mandan, Gros Ventres, and others tribesmen from the Upper Missouri, were among other white notables present. The countless ponies accompanying an estimated 10,000 Indians required much forage, and grass around the fort was so depleted, that the commissioners decided that the vast assemblage should move 30 miles east, to the meadows at the mouth of Horse Creek, near Scotts Bluff. There parades of Indian tribes in full regalia were held, oratory flowed, presents were distributed, the pipe of peace was smoked, and a solemn agreement finally reached that peace should reign between red man and white. For promising not to molest Oregon Trail travellers, the Indians would receive annual gifts or "annuities" worth $50,000.
During the large migration of 1852 all went smoothly, but a serious incident occurred in mid-June of 1853. When a North Platte ferryman, busy with emigrants, refused to transport a party of young Sioux, they seized the boat, and one of them fired on the soldiers, who recaptured it. Lieutenant H. B. Fleming and 23 men were dispatched to the nearby village of Minniconjou Sioux to arrest the offender. The Indians refused to give him up. In the ensuing exchange of gunfire three Indians were killed. The enraged Sioux then threatened the fort and passing emigrants. Through skillfull diplomacy Captain Richard Garnett, post commander, was able to calm them down and persuade them to accept their annuities for that year, but the seeds of mistrust had been planted.
Until August 18 the migrations of 1854 saw little trouble with Indians. On that day, eight miles east of the fort, a Mormon caravan passed a village of some 1,000 Brule Sioux waiting for their annuities, and a cow strayed into the village where it was promptly butchered for meat by a hungry Indian. Upon complaint of the aggrieved owner, Captain Fleming sent Lieutenant John Grattan, Sixth Infantry, with a half-breed interpreter and 28 enlisted men to arrest the offender. After a brief parley, a fusillade by the soldiers resulted in the death of Chief Conquering Bear, and the retaliatory massacre of Grattan, the interpreter and his entire command. The Indians then pillaged Bordeaux's nearby trading post and helped themselves to goods stored at the American Fur Company post three miles upriver. The Fort Laramie garrison was then threatened but the Indians moved away before inflicting any casualties there. Thus the harmony of 1851 was destroyed and 25 years of intermittent warfare began.
In 1855 most Indian leaders, fearing reprisals for the Grattan affair, brought their bands into Fort Laramie in accordance with orders received by Agent Thomas Twiss to round up all those "friendly and peaceable." Unfortunately the Brule Sioux under Little Thunder were off on a buffalo hunt north of the Platte. In August a force of 600 cavalrymen under General W. S. Harney rode westward from Fort Kearny to punish the Sioux. On September 2 the expedition arrived at Ash Hollow, 150 miles below Fort Laramie, and scouts located the "hostiles" in camp six miles north. Early the next morning the troops attacked the village from two sides, killing 86 Indians, wounding countless others, and capturing a large number of women and children. After burying the dead, treating the survivors, and destroying the Indian equipage, Harney continued up the Platte to Fort Laramie. After lecturing the cowed "friendlies" there, he reinforced the garrison, then with 450 men marched northwestward to Fort Pierre on the Missouri.

barely UPRISING OF THE SIOUX AND CHEYENNE

The outbreak of Civil War in April, 1861, with the call to arms of both Union and Confederate forces, led to the reduction of western garrisons. By the end of that year Fort Laramie had only a skeleton crew. With the transfer of the overland mail and stage lines to the Central route on July 1, offering juicy targets for Indians on the prowl, the situation along the North Platte became double precarious. However, the first serious disturbances did not occur until the spring of 1862 when Sioux raided stations west of the fort, running off horses and scalping the tenders. To protect tenuous lines of communication vital to the Union, the Adjutant-General ordered volunteer cavalry companies to the western theatre. In response, Utah and California militia under General P. E. Connor assembled at Camp Douglas near Salt Lake City, while Colonel William O. Collins arrived at Fort Laramie in May with a battalion of the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry. It was his unenviable duty to guard the route between Courthouse Rock and South Pass, a distance of over 500 miles. It was infested with mounted warriors who made random raids on mail and telegraph stations. The thin blue line seemed powerless to intercept the raiders or to chase them down after their deviltry.
News of a great uprising by their Sioux cousins in Minnesota, with the deaths of hundreds of settlers there, bolstered the arrogance of the Plains tribes. Anticipating open warfare, the Army ordered the construction of a series of new fortified posts. Among these were Camp Rankin (later Fort Sedgwick) near Julesburg, Mud Springs near Courthouse Rock, Fort Mitchell at Scotts Bluff and, to the west, Platte Bridge and Deer Creek Stations.
In the spring and summer of 1864 there were large-scale Indian attacks on stations and ranches in Nebraska and Colorado, disrupting all travel. Then came the unauthorized surprise attack in November by volunteer troops under Colonel Chivington upon a Cheyenne-Arapahoe camp at Sand Creek near Fort Lyon in southeast Colorado. The virtual massacre of around 250 men, women and children, far from squelching the Indian spirit, precipitated a powerful and vengeful alliance of all hostile tribes.
In January 1865 Sioux and Cheyenne warriors focussed their wrath on the key trail junction of Julesburg, where they sacked the town and killed a bout 20 soldiers and civilians. After ravaging the South Platte they started a retreat northward. When Colonel Collins learned of the advance on Mud Springs he assembled a picked force from Forts Laramie and Mitchell, reaching Mud Springs in time to aid in its successful defense against a siege by massed warriors, who then withdrew to Powder River.
With the end of the Civil War in the spring, and the release of regular troops to replace volunteers, the Government laid plans to restore order to the Plains. However, the vastness of the desolate terrain, Indian aggressiveness and agility, and poor initial organization and execution by the Army resulted in 1865 being a banner year for the Red Man.
When Colonel Collins was assigned to establish Fort Collins, Colorado he was replaced by the ill-starred Colonel Moonlight. His order to execute by hanging two Oglala Sioux who voluntarily brought in some white captives added to the fury of the Sioux, who now stepped up their hit-and-run tactics against isolated stations. In June Colonel Moonlight ordered that a large village of Brule Sioux, encamped at Fort Laramie as friendlies, be transferred to Fort Kearny to reduce the expense of feeding them. Marching orders were given to an escort of the Seventh Iowa Cavalry. At Horse Creek, as if by pre-arranged signal, the Brules turned upon their escort, killing Captain Fouts and several enlisted men. They escaped across the river to join the hostiles despite cavalry efforts to intercept them.
Next came the Platte Bridge fight, another disaster because the troops and civilians involved were simply overwhelmed by numbers. The station at this crossing of the North Platte was near present Casper, Wyoming, so named for Lieutenant Caspar Collins, son of Colonel Collins, who died here in a heroic effort to reach and escort an approaching Army supply train. The hostiles swarmed over and decimated the would-be rescuers, then picked off a detail assigned to repair the torn telegraph line, and finally surrounded and annihilated the approaching wagoneers and soldier guards.
Late in the year a campaign against the hostiles, known as the Powder River Expedition, finally got under way with a force of 2,500 men, directed by General Connor. Three columns were to converge in Powder River country, one from Omaha and one going directly north from Fort Laramie met west of the Black Hills. The third, under Connor, marched about 100 miles up the Platte from the fort, then north to the headwaters of the Powder where Camp Connor was established. Descending the Powder, he destroyed a village of harmless Arapahoe, the only Indians he could find. The other columns escaped starvation and massacre by the Sioux. The expedition straggled back to Fort Laramie, the crowning failure of a dismal year for the U. S. Army.

RED CLOUD'S WAR

Despite the challenge to the Army by the daring "Cossacks of the Plains," a peace party with a benign attitude toward the rampaging nomads gained ascendancy in Washington. In 1866, therefore, instead of a campaign to crush the Indians there was mounted a peace offensive, with Fort Laramie as the setting. Runners were sent out from the fort in January to hostile camps with invitations to a great council to be held in June.
In March of that year Colonel Henry Maynadier, the Fort Laramie commander, reported a good omen. Spotted Tail, head chief of the Brules, brought in the body of his daughter for burial among the whites because that was her express wish. In a ceremony which contained all the pageantry of the military and the primitive tradition of the Sioux her body was placed in a coffin on a raised platform on the plateau beyond the fort cemetery.
The peace commissioners assembled on June 1 with the principal chiefs of the Sioux and Cheyenne. Although some 3,000 Indians showed up for the ceremonies there were still some die-hard factions missing. Nevertheless the delegates present signed the treaty and the usual presents of gay-colored cloth, mirrors, cheap jewelry, peace medals, and some weapons were distributed. The treaty had a provision, not clearly explained, which permitted passage of whites over the Bozeman Trail, the new road from Fort Laramie northwestward to Virginia City and the recently discovered Montana gold mines.
While ceremonies were still in progress, Colonel Henry B. Carrington arrived on the scene with 2,000 troops, heavily armed and equipped to set up a chain of posts along the Bozeman Trail. To Red Cloud, leader of the rebels, such armed occupation would make a mockery of any peace treaty, and he withdrew in fury. Construction of the new forts in Sioux territory amounted to a declaration of war. Thus the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1866 was broken faster than any other treaty on record.
On June 17 Carrington marched north with the Eighteenth Regiment of Infantry, plus cavalry units and hundreds of mule teams hauling vast quantities of equipment and supplies. After garrisoning Camp Connor on Powder River, later relocated as Fort Reno, he moved toward the Bighorn Mountains, and in their
shadow on Piney Creek built an outsize log stockade called Fort Phil Kearny. Shortly thereafter he directed the establishment of Fort C. F. Smith at the crossing of the Bighorn River in Crow country, south-central Montana. Soon the environs of both these new forts became scenes of almost daily Indian attacks on traders, wagon trains, wood-cutting parties, and troops, with many scalps lifted. The tragic climax came on December 21 when Captain William Fetterman, disobeying orders, led 80 men into an ambush near Phil Kearny, and all were killed and mutilated by warriors led by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse. Alerted by Scout "Portugee" Phillips, Fort Laramie troops under General Wessels rode through sub-zero weather to relieve the garrison. In 1867 the Army scored victories in the Wagon Box Fight near Phil Kearny and the Hayfield Fight near C. F. Smith.
The suffering and heroism enacted along the Bozeman Trail was destined to have little impact on the course of history because of larger events elsewhere. First was the westward progress of the Union Pacific Railroad, reaching Cheyenne in 1867. The completion of this modern "Overland Route" would lessen the importance of the Oregon Trail or Platte route, and thereby make it less imperative to dispossess the Indians of the Northern Plains. Secondly, again the "doves" in Congress prevailed over the "hawks." Accordingly, an Act of July, 1867 set up a new Commission to make peace, once and for all.
Arriving at Fort Laramie via Cheyenne in November, the Commission under General W. T. Sherman was dismayed to find no Sioux to parley with as planned. Red Cloud refused to come in until the garrisons at Forts Reno, Phil Kearny and C. F. Smith were withdrawn. The Commission acceded and in March, 1868 the President ordered their abandonment. However, it was not until the hated forts were totally evacuated in August, and then burned to the ground by the implacable Red Cloud, that he came in to Fort Laramie to affix the final Indian signature.
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 gave the Sioux as a reservation all of what is now South Dakota west of the Missouri River. It also gave them hunting rights in the great expanse north of the North Platte and east of the Bighorn Mountains, designated as unceded Indian lands. The First Red Cloud Agency was established in 1871 on the North Platte, just 25 miles below the fort, at the present Nebraska-Wyoming line. In 1873 it was moved north to a site on White River in northwestern Nebraska.

BLACK HILLS GOLD AND THE SIOUX CAMPAIGN

Ratification of the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1869, coupled with the completion that year of the first transcontinental railroad, seemed to presage a new era of peace on the Plains, but it again proved to be a fragile peace. There were many scattered hostile actions in the Fort Laramie region, 1869-1873, such as the killing of Lieutenant Levi P. Robinson on a wood-cutting detail near Laramie Peak. Renegades under Sitting Bull in Montana harassed surveyors of the proposed Northern Pacific Railroad. Accordingly, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs recommended the establishment of U. S. military forces at the agencies to preserve law and order, and to prevent the Sioux from straying off their reservations. Furthermore, he enjoined that "any found off be forced in and brought to obedience by the military."
It should have surprised no one that the Sioux at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies were restless, simply because they felt their style somewhat cramped after generations of untrammelled buffalo-hunting and inter-tribal warfare. There was also deep-seated repugnance to suggestions of agriculture, and chronic dissatisfaction with the beef issues. Threatening demonstrations against civilian employees led in 1874 to the establishment of military posts in their midst Fort Robinson at Red Cloud Agency (named for the slain Lieutenant), and Camp Sheridan at the Spotted Tail Agency further east, both linked to the Fort Laramie command post by the old Fort Pierre Trail.
The Fort Laramie Treaty was sabotaged by the discovery of gold in the Black Hills. The motives of the Custer Expedition out of Fort Abraham Lincoln (on the Missouri River, opposite Bismarck, North Dakota) in the spring of 1874 may have been scientific, but the results were cataclysmic. When the excitable Custer sent Scout Charley Reynolds to Fort Laramie to telegraph the news to the world, the wholesale invasion of the Sioux Reservation was bound to follow. In 1875 the Government sent out a second scientific expedition to the Hills, this time from Cheyenne, to make sure the gold was real. Escorted by Fort Laramie troops under Colonel I. R. Dodge, Professor W. P. Jenney of New York prospected the Hills and confirmed the presence of the glittering metal.
When a Commission sent by the Government to Red Cloud Agency failed in its mission to buy back the Black Hills, the Army gave up its efforts to keep prospectors away, large numbers of Sioux and Cheyenne then expressed their anger by withdrawing to Powder River country, to hunt buffalo and plan retribution.
The wayward tribesmen were issued an ultimatum: return to their respective reservations by January 31, 1876 or the Army would take appropriate action. The sullen warriors elected to fight for their freedom.
In the 1876 war against the defiant tribes Fort Laramie played a primary role as a base of operations, supplemented by the new Fort Fetterman at the main North Platte crossing 80 miles upriver. Thus it took on vigorous new life as a staging area for thousands of blue-clad troopers and hundreds of Army supply wagons heading north towards the headwaters of the Powder and other tributaries of the Yellowstone River. In March Colonel J. J. Reynolds left Fort Laramie with cavalry to surprise an encampment of Sioux and Cheyenne on the Little Powder. In June General George Crook led a large force northward to a head-on clash with massed warriors under Crazy Horse. This Battle of the Rosebud was a triumph for the Sioux because Crook was put out of action, unable to effect a junction with General Terry's forces moving south from the Yellowstone. The stage was set for the famous disaster to the Seventh Cavalry on the Little Bighorn.
If Custer's annihilation was the zenith of military glory for the Plains Indians, it was a sun that sank quickly. While the tribes scattered to hunt for food, the Army was given full support for a final solution to the Indian problem. Again Fort Laramie figured in the clean-up campaigns now set in motion. It was the base for General Crook's control of the now subdued Red Cloud Agency, and a successful campaign against Dull Knife's Cheyenne village on Crazy Woman Fork of Powder River. Early in 1877 Crazy Horse himself surrendered, while the incorrigible Sitting Bull fled to Canada. The Government was now able to dictate the formal relinquishment of the Black Hills.

THE CHEYENNE-DEADWOOD STAGE ROAD

Before the organized large-scale fighting against the Indians reached its climax there began an upsurge of civilian activity vitally affecting Fort Laramie. This was the Hegira to the Black Hills and the development of heavy commercial traffic to and from Cheyenne. The historical axis of which Fort Laramie was the fulcrum now did a 90 degree turn, from the east-west orientation of the Old Oregon Trail to the north-south flow of traffic over the new route to the Black Hills.
Fort Laramie's destiny was welded to that of Cheyenne when that "Magic City of the Plains" about 100 miles to the south began as a huddle of shacks springing up at "the end of track," when the Union Pacific construction crews reached that point in 1867. The Sioux wars and the stampede to South Dakota combined to make Cheyenne a great supply depot and jumping-off place for the Black Hills while Fort Laramie became its principal gateway and guardian. This dual role was assured by the construction of a handsome new iron bridge over the North Platte, just in time to accommodate the new wave of Argonauts.
The traditional method of crossing the North Platte, after the often-disastrous wet crossings by early emigrants, was by a precarious Government-operated ferry. Recognizing how much their prosperity depended upon freighting contracts to supply new camps and agencies north of the Platte, and disturbed by competition from a new road north from Sidney, Nebraska (with a timber bridge near Courthouse Rock), Cheyenne business interests agitated for a proper bridge at Fort Laramie. Congress passed a bill in January, 1874, authorizing $15,000 for this improvement. The successful bidder was the King Bridge Company of Cleveland, Ohio. The fabricated iron girders and plates were shipped by rail to Cheyenne, thence by bull-train to the fort, arriving in February, 1875. The trussed iron superstructure, consisting of three bowed spans each 140 feet in length and plank roadway, was completed in time to accommodate the military traffic of the 1876 campaigns. While the Army was settling accounts with the Sioux and Cheyenne, the clatter of civilian traffic over the marvellous new span reached a crescendo.
In November the Wyoming territorial legislature authorized the survey and designation of a road from Cheyenne via Chugwater Creek and Fort Laramie to Custer City. The firm of Gilman, Salisbury, and Patrick, awarded a monopoly in commercial transportation, pushed the construction of a chain of road ranches or stations, assembled personnel and equipment and, by March 1, 1876, their new line was in operation. The assemblage of vehicles on the new Black Hills Road included bull-trains, buckboards, spring wagons, anything that would roll. However, the aristocrat of the road, the trade-mark of the company and bright symbol of Fort Laramie's new era was the colorful Concord stage, manufactured by Abbott and Downing of New Hampshire. The vehicle could accommodate nine first-class passengers inside and and equal number on the roof, plus up to 1500 pounds of cargo and luggage. The driver perched up front managed the six horses with reins and the cracking sound of his long whip.
The run to Custer City from Cheyenne was 180 miles, or 266 miles to Deadwood after that fabled gulch became the main attraction. The route from Cheyenne to Fort Laramie followed the Chugwater and Laramie Rivers where there was a series of road ranches. The stop just below the fort was Three Mile Ranch, just off the military reservation, which doubled as a place of entertainment, completed with assorted belles, for off-duty soldiers. At the fort itself, in the west bottoms, the Post Trader was permitted to build a log structure known as the Rustic Hotel, which doubled as the Fort Laramie stage station.
A large part of our inherited imagery of "the Wild West" stems from the epidemic of crime along the Cheyenne-Deadwood Trail. Those who preyed on Black Hills travellers included unreconstructed Indians from the agencies, but most criminal activity was the work of white outlaws. Sometimes there was no way to tell whether a given atrocity was the handiwork of red man or white. While Indian strays killed mainly for revenge, the outlaws were bent on plain stealing, with their killings of company employees and passengers incidental to that main objective. The fine art of highway robbery reached a new peak in their assaults on armored stage-coaches with treasure-boxes of gold heading for Cheyenne. Fort Laramie cavalry patrols were frequently assigned to guard danger spots or track down criminals. Among incidents in the Fort Laramie neighborhood were several killings at the Three Mile Ranch, the lynching of horse-thieves by masked men just north of the iron bridge, and stage hold-ups along Laramie River.
The majority of stage passengers got through intact, as did the gold shipments which sometimes had a value of $30,000. Among notable patrons were Generals Sherman, Sheridan and Crook, Chiefs Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, and the notorious Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. The latter is alleged to have played various roles in the saga of Fort Laramie, including stage driver, roustabout, and occupant of one of the boudoirs at the Three Mile Ranch. William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was another celebrated visitor of the period, as scout for the Fifth Cavalry.

DECLINE AND ABANDONMENT

Fort Laramie in the 1880s was in marked contrast to the small post that in 1849-1850 had sprouted around the new parade ground adjoining the adobe trading post. As dictated by military exigencies and spasmodic Congressional appropriations the fort structural complex had gradually evolved into a sprawling assemblage of adobe, stone, frame and lime-grout buildings. In an inventory of 1888 about 70 Army buildings and civilian appendages are identified, being the most recent or the most durable of a total of over 180 buildings constructed here between 1849 and 1885.
In its fourth decade as a military post Fort Laramie had assumed the size and somewhat the appearance of a respectable town. Indeed it was a stabilizing influence, resembling a county seat, in a region which was shifting rapidly from its wild frontier character to the beginnings of permanent settlement. Range cattle and cowboys were replacing buffalo and Indians. Mines and ranches became the nuclei of communities sinking roots into the land. Stage lines faded away as new railroads, trunk lines and branches, advanced. But Fort Laramie, guardian of the trails and the precursor of civilization for a vast wilderness, was doomed when that civilization was assured. Even as the fort seemed to grow and achieve its greatest glory as a structural complex, the seeds of its destruction were planted.
During this decade the post, under the successive commands of Colonels Wesley Merritt of the Fifth Cavalry, and John Gibbon and Henry C. Merriam of the Seventh Infantry, had a regular command of of six companies with an average complement of 350 men. However, except for occasional assistance to civil authorities in upholding law and order, field exercises, maneuvers, and target practice, military activity was at low ebb, while grand balls, celebrations, dress parades, theatricals, picnics, pink lemonade, and tree-planting became the dominant preoccupations. This is not the stuff of which epic history is made. Fort Laramie's star, which had shone so brilliantly in the western sky, was on the wane.
In 1886 General J. M. Schofield of the Adjutant-General's Office, noted that the Elkhorn Valley (later the Chicago, Northwestern) Railroad would reach Fort Robinson, but would bypass Fort Laramie. That same year Colonel Merriam acknowledged that, "this post has lost its significance as a military location," and therefore further expenditures for construction and repairs of buildings would not be justified. It appears that the top-level decision to abandon was deferred for three more years because of influence exerted by Wyoming officials who were reluctant to part with the benefits, both economic and protective, that accrued from the presence of this post in Eastern Wyoming. The inevitable came to pass on August 31, 1889 when General Schofield announced that, "the garrisons of Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory; Fort Hays, Kansas; and Fort Lyon, Colorado will be withdrawn, and the several military posts will be abandoned."
The actual demise of Fort Laramie was spread over a period of one year. From May 1889 to March 1890 various units of the Seventh Infantry were transferred to Fort Logan, Colorado. A detachment from Fort Robinson stripped buildings of doors, windows, fixtures, and accessories. On April 9 Lieutenant C. W. Taylor presided over a public auction of buildings and furniture rejects. On June 10 the War Department issued its final order when it transferred to the Secretary of the Interior the military reservation, and the wood and timber reservation at Laramie Peak, "the same being no longer required for military purposes."


EVOLUTION OF THE MILITARY POST

There is irony in the fact that Fort Laramie reached its zenith as a structural complex just before being abandoned to its fate. About 65 Army buildings and civilian appendages are accounted for in 1888, the last official inventory of record. An official panoramic photograph of 1889 shows an installation truly impressive in its scope, the size of a respectable town. This sprawling cantonment was a random assemblage of adobe, stone, frame, and concrete buildings, either the most recent or the most durable of a total of over 180 buildings constructed here between 1849 and 1885. Fort Laramie as a three-dimensional historical entity cannot be understood as a static phenomenon of 1889 or any other date. It was a 40-year process of structural evolution.
The best way to visualize the fort in its expanding kaleidoscopic form is by examination of a series of official ground plans and unofficial panoramic pictures, both sketches and photographs, made by various talented visitors to or inhabitants of the fort, that have been collected by research historians. However, some verbal impressions may help also to see Fort Laramie as the stage or rather series of stages where "the pageant of the West" was enacted. Throughout this architectural story there are two common denominators: there was a perpetual shortage of shelter for men and animals, with chronic overcrowding; and what shelter there was seemed to deteriorate rapidly, forever requiring repairs or replacements for which there were never enough funds. Although it inspires us in retrospect because of its illustrious history, Fort Laramie was not a model of military architecture, nor was it ever, by modern standards, a comfortable place to live.
Fort John, the adobe quadrangle bought in 1849 from the fur traders, melted away within a few years but it was around long enough to serve two purposes. Despite its crumbling condition it housed troops the first winter, and saw some service as stable and hospital. Also, its chance northeast-southwest orientation governed that of the new parade ground, around which the main Army structures subsequently clustered. By 1857 when only one wall of this relic remained, the new "military station," wrote Captain Gove, "consists of two or three two-story wooden buildings and about 20 one-story adobe structures, also one or two storehouses, all of which have been built irregularly in every and any direction. There is a large open square for drill and parade purposes." We recognize here the unique and imposing Old Bedlam, a two-company infantry barracks, and several small adobe officers quarters. In his official report of that same year Lieutenant J.G. Kelton also identified frame stables and slabside mud-roofed Quartermaster buildings, all near collapse.
Ten years later, in the lull between Indian wars, Major E. B. Grimes identified 44 buildings, including 6 officers quarters, 5 soldier barracks with kitchens, 3 cavalry stables. He classified the buildings all the way from good through serviceable, unserviceable and very bad to utterly worthless. In the last category are hovels assigned to laundresses, the band, and the post chaplain, which says something about frontier Army sociology. By this time a sizeable adobe hospital had appeared, and a masonry guardhouse had replaced the primitive frame jail of 1851, the latter being so decrepit that prisoners could easily escape "by means of a hole."
In August 1866 General W. T. Sherman inspected the post and observed that there was "a mixture of all sorts of houses of every conceivable pattern and promise scattered about." The two principal buildings of two stories each (Bedlam and the old Barracks) were so damaged and so rickety in a high wind that the occupants sometimes escaped them to sleep on the open parade. Low buildings of adobe with good roofs, and not too large, were economical and well adapted to the climate but admittedly dark, dusty and ridden with vermin. Adobe or sun-dried brick were made by contract; lime was burned 12 miles off; a saw-mill was erected 50 miles off; and timber was cut and hauled by the soldiers.
A priceless description of the place a year later is afforded by M. Simonin, a French observer with the Indian peace commission: "Seen from the route we followed the fort resembled more a Spanish-American village than a military post of the United States. The barracks, the warehouse, the offices, the officers' quarters are all constructed of stone [sic] and whitewashed with lime." He compares Old Bedlam with a Panama hotel and the traders' new dwelling with a Swiss chalet. Brown's Hotel across the river, made of adobe and logs, was used as an officers mess. He also refers to a "large circular ditch near the Fort."
Other travellers noted this ditch, which had been constructed in 1865 by the Eleventh Ohio Cavalry to connect battery redoubts thrown up as insurance against Indian attack while Colonel Collins was absent with his command on the relief of Mud Springs Station. Evidently the temporary fortification was strung along the plateau and bottoms to the north of the fort, which would have been the section most vulnerable to surprise attack. A more permanent fortification was built by regular troops of the Second Cavalry in 1866, also in the bottoms to the north. This was a roughly quadrangular enclosure of about 2 acres consisting of adobe walls 8 feet high and 3 feet thick. It had two flanking hexagonal blockhouses or bastions, with gun embrasures, and was surrounded by a ditch. When the threat of Indian frontal attack on the fort faded, this structure was used as a corral for the Quartermaster's horses and mules, while the bastions served as teamsters' quarters. Evidence of the frequent wholesale turnover of personnel at the fort is attested to by the fact that in later years some fort residents entertained the belief that this 1866 structure was the 1849 trading post!
Captain Luhn's report of 1870 military structures is valuable because it gives dimensions, number and kinds of rooms, date of construction, material of construction, and present condition. As of that date 4 buildings survived from 1849-1850: Bedlam, the magazine or arsenal, a rough board bakehouse with stone oven, and an adobe post office. (The civilian-operated sutler's store is of course not included in this inventory.) Of the remaining buildings 22 were constructed between 1854 and 1860, and 23 after 1865. The most important buildings in the newest category were two sets of single-story infantry barracks of frame construction, and a two-story frame officers quarters, welcome additions to the parade ground complex.
The Quartermaster Report of 1882 reflects an extensive reconstruction program during the preceding decade, and the disappearance of many obsolete structures. This lists a total of 50 structures of which 23 were frame or rough boards, 10 of concrete, 10 of adobe, 3 of adobe and frame, and 4 of logs, sod or stone. Conditions at this time must have been above average, with 21 buildings reported in good repair, and 15 in fair condition. The most significant new buildings were those of lime-concrete or "grout," that is, massive crude masonry walls poured in successive layers in wooden forms. In this group, constructed during the early and mid-seventies, were the new hospital on the hill overlooking the fort, a double set of quarters north of Bedlam, a new guardhouse, and cavalry barracks.
The last spasm of construction activity at Fort Laramie, 1883-1885, brought forth another batch of lime-concrete structures, notably a set of non-commissioned officers quarters near the hospital, a new bakehouse, a large commissary storehouse, two double sets and one single set of officers quarters attached to original adobes south of Old Bedlam, a new kitchen wing on Bedlam itself, a single set of officers quarters south of the sutler's store, and a handsome Administration building, the final construction job on the premises. It is not surprising that the bulk of the fort structures that have survived consist of these durable lime-concrete models, either intact or in ruins.
A few special situations may be noted to point up the evolutionary nature of Fort Laramie buildings. Among Army structures a classic example is that of the post guardhouse. There were three of these in succession, of frame, stone, and concrete respectively, each in a supposedly different location except that the third version was by pure coincidence and possibly even without the knowledge of the builder, placed almost directly over the foundation stones of the extinct 1851 guardhouse. The 1873 hospital was built right over the original post cemetery, which was also the original fur traders' cemetery, with no re-burials beforehand. Similarly, at least two officers quarters at the south end of the parade ground overlapped the 1849 trading post site. As an example of the evolution of function, the Commanding Officers quarters migrated from place to place, being in Bedlam in the mid-sixties but also in various adobe, frame and concrete buildings. The post bakery was in at least 4 different locations over the years, while the post office seems to have been shuttled back and forth between the sutler's store and various other odd buildings.
The most unique civilian structure on the post was, of course, the Sutler's Store or Post Traders'. It was probably the most heavily used building of any. It existed from 1849 right on through, never migrating, but undergoing constant accretions and redesigns; yet it is veiled in mystery because most of the business records have been lost, and the building was never accounted for in the Quartermaster's annual inspections.
Among other non-military structures we have noted the Rustic Hotel, Brown's Hotel, and the sutler's residence. In addition there were, on the fringes of the fort, an assortment of shanties, dugouts and hovels of civilian employees and contractors, all disappeared. Certain trading posts are indicated on the east side of the Laramie in 1854, but these were quite temporary affairs permitted within the post reservation only briefly, during the Indian scare.


FORT LARAMIE AS COUNTRY VILLAGE AND HISTORIC RUIN

From 1890 when the Army hauled down the flag for the last time until 1938 when the Federal Government reclaimed the place as a National Monument, a span of almost a half-century, Fort Laramie slept in the sun, dreaming of faded glory. Although a few perceptive individuals recognized its lingering historic value, and many visited it out of curiosity, its status during this period was that of a country village, not altogether deserted but looking rather forlorn, like a tornado-ravaged community which never bothered to rebuild.
The desolation was the result of the wholesale demolition of buildings that occurred in 1890 and the decade following. This is not to condemn those responsible because in the 1890s there was a scarcity of local lumber for construction and there was no thought, in or out of Government, of reserving Fort Laramie for future park purposes. Indeed, it would be 25 years before anyone of record would suggest publicly that the few buildings remaining should be preserved for posterity.
The auction of 1890 was poorly attended because of inclement weather and muddy roads. The total proceeds realized by the Government was less than $2,500. John Hunton, who had the advantage of living on the premises as the last post sutler, 1888-1890, was one of the few bidders. He paid less than $400. for a dozen buildings, including the Hospital and Non-Commissioned Officers Quarters on the hill, and the eight buildings which comprised Officers' Row. Since he already owned the Sutler's Store, this gave him control of the line of intact buildings which are today the crown jewels in the collection of surviving Fort Laramie buildings Old Bedlam, the Store, the Magazine, and two Officers Quarters. He filed for a homestead on a quarter section that included these buildings.
Another successful bidder at the auction was one Joe Wilde, who also homesteaded part of the fort grounds, including the Old Bakery, the Commissary Storehouse and the Cavalry Barracks. He converted the latter into a combination hotel, store, dance hall, and saloon. The south end of the parade ground, site of the adobe trading post, was homesteaded by the widow of Thomas Sandercock, a civilian engineer at the fort, who made her home in the frame officers quarters of 1870. Her use of the 1866 Guardhouse for farming purposes also forestalled its disappearance.

Counting two small buildings, a frame out-house behind Officers Quarters F and the masonry shed behind Officers Quarters B, a total of 12 Fort Laramie buildings survived more or less intact to the modern period. Including the 9 ruins that remain with standing walls, that means over 50 buildings were demolished, moved elsewhere, or dismantled for lumber. Thus the old fort was reincarnated, so to speak, in many a homestead shack, ranch house or barn.
Although the fort itself was diminished, fortunately its setting was left largely unimpaired. The nearest modern community, the town of Fort Laramie, is three miles distant, and the Burlington Railroad of which it is a station follows the north side of the Platte. Thanks to an unobtrusive irrigation system in the valley, the Laramie River has tended to stabilize, restoring timber growth along its banks. A cottonwood grove planted by Wilde is a living reminder of Fort Laramie as country village.
John Hunton died September, 1925, at the venerable age of 88, but the spirit that he embodied caught fire in others. Local newspaper editors expressed dismay at evidence of deterioration and desecration of the fort, the result of absentee landlords, indifferent renters, and stray visitors who felt free to make off with any relics they could lay their hands on. At the first meeting of the new Wyoming Historical Landmarks Commission in 1927, other patriotic citizens voiced their concern about the fate of the old fort. The Commission, with the support of local communities, made repeated efforts to acquire it. Although it was thwarted by unwilling land-owners its efforts focussed public attention on the issue. Symptomatic of growing public interest in preservation was a giant celebration held on the premises in 1930, in cooperation with the Oregon Trail Memorial Association, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first wagons up the Platte route.
During early years of the Depression hope for saving the fort dwindled, but the turning point came in 1936 when National Park Service representatives first visited the site and, impressed with what they saw, expressed to Wyoming Governor Leslie Miller interest in preserving it. This led to a successful effort by the Governor to persuade the Wyoming legislature to buy and land-owners to sell 214 acres in 1937. The State thereupon tendered a deed to the United States, which was accepted by the Secretary of the Interior. By Presidential Proclamation of July 16, 1938, this became Fort Laramie National Monument. (In 1960, when the area was enlarged by Congress to 571 acres, it was re-designated a National Historic Site.)
Once more the flag of the United States would fly over the old parade ground. And now the strange assortment of ruins and ancient buildings, shattered, sagging, collapsing, some the abode of cattle, hogs and chickens, would awake from their long slumber.

THE CRUSADE TO SAVE FORT LARAMIE

The epic history of Fort Laramie from 1834, the heyday of the Rocky Mountain fur trade, to 1890, the end of the Indian wars, is well known. After the Army auctioned off its abandoned buildings in April, 1890 the Fort soon took on the appearance of a quaint country village, with a few dwellings of remarkable architecture which were the adopted homes of civilians left over from Army days, surrounded by a number of impressive ruins. The principal residents were ex-sutler and rancher John Hunton and his wife Blanche, who owned the ancient Sutler's Store and Officers' Row, including the famous Old Bedlam; Mary and Joe Wilde, owners of the Commissary Storehouse and the Cavalry Barracks which became hotel, saloon, and dance-hall; and Harriet Sandercock, widow of Thomas Sandercock, and their descendants, who controlled a corner of the parade ground area, including an officer's quarters, guard-house, and the site of the 1849 trading post, Fort John. These are the individuals to whom posterity must be grateful for their effective, albeit haphazard, preservation of those buildings that did surviveWe are concerned here with neither the epic history of the military post nor the small local happenings there after its abandonment. We are concerned here with a story never before told in any comprehensive way, yet it is a story of interest to all Americans who appreciate the historic shrines that remind them of their unique heritage of freedom. It is the story of a few dedicated men who, against great odds, succeeded in saving for posterity the priceless physical remains of the once great Fort which Hunton, Wilde, and the Sandercocks had retained for whatever personal reasons.
The "odds against" were the steady deterioration of these buildings with the inexorable passage of time, the successive land-owners' reluctance to sell, and the unavoidable but heart-breaking delays by the State of Wyoming in finding a formula for acquisition. The "odds in favor" were a gradual awareness of Fort Laramie's significance by the public and corresponding interest in its preservation, coupled with persistent efforts by a handful of Fort Laramie champions who recognized that the Fort could be saved only if it could be acquired by some kind of philanthropic foundation or a Government agency with the capability of restoring and preserving it. Another plus was the fact that the buildings that did manage to survive all hazards for almost half a century stripping for salvage, neglect, misuse, fire, vandalism until such an agency did arrive, providentially, on the scene, were among the most important, historically.
When the Army abandoned Fort Laramie, and for two and a half decades thereafter, there is not the slightest evidence of thinking on the part of anyone that a mistake had been made, that Fort Laramie should not be abandoned, but preserved as a historic shrine. Newspapers and other known and accessible sources have been searched in vain for such evidence prior to 1915. On the contrary, by 1915 most of the Fort building had disappeared because of a deliberate policy by Hunton and Wilde to raise cash by selling off such buildings for their salvage value, and there is no evidence of any public or private outcry at this exploitation of buildings deemed otherwise worthless. The lumber-hungry homesteaders who bought them managed to remove almost all the frame buildings and strip most of the lime-concrete buildings. In 1915 there were only 22 pre-1890 structures still standing, compared to over 60 identified on the last official Fort ground plan. Of these 22, there were 14 relatively intact, and 8 consisting of lime-concrete ruins. Of the intact 14, it is evident that 12 were thus preserved because they served the utilitarian purposes of their owners. Of only 2 Old Bedlam and the Sutler's Store can it be said that they were preserved, by John Hunton, for reasons of personal sentiment aloneThis is not to condemn Hunton or anyone else for not coming up with the radical idea of preservation by a public agency. The hard frontier times precluded the possibility that any state or local agency could achieve such a purpose, and the United States Government had not yet begun to evolve a philosophy of historic site preservation. Nevertheless, it is of interest to ascertain just when the germ of the idea of actual physical preservation of the Fort in perpetuity first appeared, in contrast to mere sentimentality and memorialization. Exactly when was the fatalistic acceptance of Fort Laramie's eventual extinction reversed in favor of an active campaign to preserve and restore it?
The pivotal moment seems to have been on June 17, 1915 when dedication services were held near the Sutler's Store for a large concrete obelisk marker with an imbedded marble plate inscription which reads: FORT LARAMIE A MILITARY POST ON THE OREGON TRAIL, JUNE 16, 1849 - MARCH 2, 1890. THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED BY THE STATE OF WYOMING AND A FEW INTERESTED RESIDENTS The historic occasion is recorded for posterity in the Torrington Telegram dated Thursday, June 17, 1915:

BIG OUTING DAY THURSDAYl

Thursday of this week was a history making epoch in this valley and it will long be remembered because of granite markers dotting the course of the Oregon Trail, that were publicly unveiled that day, with music by the Torrington band, and addresses by Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard, the state regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Ex-Governor Joseph M. Carey, Hon. Ed. L. Patrick, and Mr. Bartlette, of Cheyenne.
. . . There was a large crowd at Fort Laramie for the opening exercises, and the place was an ideal one for the program.
This was the principal marker among the three that were to be unveiled that day, and the principal addresses were delivered at that point. . .
Dr. Hebard is a talented lady, and because of her interest in Old Fort Laramie had a paper
touching on the importance of Fort Laramie on the Oregon Trail. . .
Ex-Governor Carey spoke on the "Pioneer" and because of his acquaintance with the men who wrested these broad acres from the Indians, he gave us an account of the men and the work of those early days that was beyond anything ever written. . .
The flag was drawn from the marker by Mrs. Hunton who is a daughter of the American Revolution. . .
There were twenty or more cars at Fort Laramie by the time the speaking began, and the program lasted well up to the dinner hour. The shady quarters about the Joe Wilde home, and the running streams of water were too inducive of comfort for the voyageurs to leave before dinner. . . and those who did not have dinner baskets were fed at the Wilde table.
On that memorable day who came up with the preservation idea? Not John Hunton, whose lengthy correspondence betrays no concern how the buildings would be protected beyond his own timeOn the contrary, his evident co-sponsorship of the marker bespoke awareness that in the course of time all the buildings would disintegrate and vanish. Not Dr. Hebard who, while speaking of the Fort's history in glowing terms, did not even hint at the desirability of preservation. [6] Nor was it the Honorable Joseph Carey, the impassioned orator. No, the revolutionary idea was born in the head of a member of the audience that day, one James Johnston, editor of the Torrington Telegram who went straight to his desk to pen the earliest documentable record of an outright plea for the preservation of Fort Laramie. This was an editorial which appeared in the same issue reporting the dedication:

A NOTABLE PLEASURE RESORT

Few people realize the importance of Fort Laramie as a historic spot in Wyoming, and to think that the site of the first fort in the State lies within the borders of our county ought to arouse the patriotism of the present generation to restore the works and make it into a beautiful summer resort.
There are a dozen or more buildings intact, and can be put in shape for use at very little cost. The hospital commands a beautiful sight of the valley, and the dormitory for the privates is now the beautiful home of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Wilde. . .
. . . The Oregon Trail marker [of 1915] is by far the the best one put up on the trail. . . Close to this is the old trading post the very building where the white man obtained his supplies, and the Indian bartered his wares.
The home of Mr. and Mrs. John Hunton is in the row of buildings bordering on the Laramie River front, the end of which now terminates with the Bedlam house made famous by the writings of Captain Charles King.
. . . This is the ideal spot for a summer home, or for a picnicking place during the summer months. It is a convenient distance from Torrington, Guernsey and Wheatland and because of the fame of Old Fort Laramie it would be a popular place for gatherings and chautauquas as well.
Because it was inconceivable in pre-World War I times that any government federal, state, or local would undertake to preserve an old fort solely as a historical park, for its own sake, all early clarion calls for preservation of Fort Laramie, like Johnston's, revolved around various possibilities of pragmatic or utilitarian uses of the Fort structures, with their preservation only incidental. Even though such uses, had they been adopted, would have seriously impaired the authentic character of the military post, we accept these earnest proposals as evidence of a genuine desire to save the Fort, by whatever means. Johnston's notion was a nebulous one which of course bore no fruit, and we can smile today at the naivete of "restoring the works at very little cost." Nevertheless an inspired idea was born and would be echoed thereafter with increasing insistence until the dream would become a reality.
Another idea for preservation was voiced the following year in the Guernsey Gazette by editor George Houser. This time preservation was to be achieved by "setting aside the Old Fort as a training school for American soldiers," a thought springing from the spirit of preparedness engendered by the ominous gathering clouds of World War I. On July 4, 1916 there was a patriotic picnic at the site, "not only to give old-timers a chance to meet, but to talk over the possibility of getting the Government to establish a military school at the Old Fort." There was baseball and wrestling matches, but the main event was speech-making: "Two Mighty Good Addresses." Judge Winter of Converse County, "one of the brainy orators of the State," presented to "a vast audience" masterly arguments for Government ownership of Fort Laramie. The remarks of ex-Governor Carey were also full of "words of burning patriotism." In reporting the event the editor remarked that, "every available effort is being made for the purchase and preservation of the Old Fort, with everything pointing to success Just who was making what kind of an effort is not revealed. Though we suspect that Wyoming Congressmen approached the War Department with this proposal, it obviously fell on deaf ears. Its merit lay not in its practicality but in its publicity, nurturing the more mature concept of Fort preservation by a U. S. Government agency of some kind, compared to the Torrington editor's thought of a local recreational facility.
While the imaginative and energetic Houser himself was evidently the prime promoter of the military school idea as well as the historic picnic, he reveals that the originator of the military school concept was Will M. Maupin, then editor of the Midwest Magazine published at York, Nebraska. Houser confessed that Maupin's idea "is so sensible and contains so much in favor of practical preparedness that we give it in full to our readers":
When Uncle Sam decided to abandon Old Fort Laramie he committed a grave blunder. When he permitted that historic old post to be sold and its many splendid buildings to go to wrack and ruin, he committed a crime.
There is just one way for Uncle Sam to rectify that blunder and atone for that crime repurchase the old reservation and there, in the very heart of the republic, establish a great military school, a second West Point. Scores of reasons could be brought forward. . .
Physically there is a splendid stream of pure water flowing through the old reservation. . . all ready to furnish the power that could generate enough electricity to supply a great Commonwealth. . . The vast stretch of country adjacent would afford ample training for young soldiers. . .
In case this republic should go to war. . . it would be the great middle west that would supply the most and best men. . . And here in the great middle west is the place to establish a great military training school. . . The first step is to re-purchase the old reservation and make it a government park. After the old buildings have been restored as nearly as possible, the work of building the military school should begin.
Maupin's concept of keeping a restored Fort separate from any new buildings is unique among early vocal Fort Laramie preservationists. In a 1945 interview by the writer, Mr. Maupin claimed some credit for the establishment of Fort Laramie National Monument for, he asserted, he was "always editorializing" in favor of the preservation of that place. He visited the Fort frequently, the first time in 1914 to attend a dance at Wilde's place. It is of interest to note that Maupin became the first Custodian of neighboring Scotts Bluff National Monument when that area was established in 1919. This was his reward for recommending the establishment of that Oregon Trail landmark as a National Park Another Nebraskan, A. E. Sheldon, Superintendent of the Nebraska State Historical Society for many years, claims to have plumped for the preservation of the Fort even earlier than Maupin did. In a letter of 1935 to the Historical Landmarks Commission of Wyoming he states: ". . . 25 years ago I wrote and spoke in favor of acquiring and holding this notable historical site where I have camped many times, sometimes for two or three weeks." That would seem to cast him in the role of preservation advocate as early as 1910, but this writer has been unable to verify this claim in any publications or in the Sheldon correspondence in the Society collection in Lincoln. During this period another notion of what to do with Fort Laramie was born in the head of the Right Reverend Nathaniel S. Thomas, Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Wyoming. This was to be a church-sponsored school "where boys could live in a church atmosphere" which would somehow be provided by "this former Post, the most historic in the United States." The proposal, which preoccupied the Bishop from 1915 to 1919, involved an estimated cost of $130,000 for the purchase of the Fort and adjacent agricultural lands, and "remodeling of the Fort buildings." The discloser of the Thomas proposal writes: "To the Bishop's credit, I believe, he planned to restore Old Fort Laramie. He had a sense of history and his vision was an early one concerning what could and ought to be done with the then ramshackle buildings." We concede the Bishop's awe of Fort Laramie, "with all its history and romance," but we cannot discern evidence that he had meaningful restoration in mind, as distinct from conversion to alien purposes. In any event his dream was not revealed publicly at the time so could have had no impact on public thinking.
A development proposal of a more practical nature that did receive full publicity is revealed in the Guernsey Gazette for August 31, 1917:
Old Fort Laramie, where the soldiers were stationed in the old Indian days of the long ago, is to become a mecca for tourists. Mr. Joseph Wilde has disposed of a half-interest in the old fort
to Mr. Carlson, a contractor who put in the big tunnel on the Government ditch, and the new firm are contemplating many improvements on the buildings and grounds. They will put in a store and a hotel and will be equipped to take care of the trade in good shape.
As the tourist travel increases in the state the old fort has become a mecca for tourists and Mr. Wilde has been bothered considerable in trying to provide accommodations to the visitor. . .
A few of the contemplated improvements are: an auto road through the grounds, general merchandise store, gas station, new foundations and concrete floor on the old Cavalry Barracks porch, the old dance hall will be repaired and redecorated, and many other improvements made.
The ruins of the old frontier fort is well advertised all over the United States from its historical importance and will become a popular place for Eastern tourists. The new firm is bound to be successful in their new venture.
While the Carlson project to develop tourist facilities scarcely constituted historic preservation, it did mean that somebody intended to make an effort to keep certain buildings in good useable condition, in this case primarily the Barracks and the Commissary Storehouse, the main buildings in the Wilde plot. That the venture fizzled may be deduced from the fact that in 1919 Carlson sold to Paul McDonald who fronted for H. S. Clarke, an Omaha banker, who was more interested in playing the role of gentleman rancher than he was in catering to tourists. He made certain changes in the Barracks but apparently for his own benefit and that of his tenants, not the public. Thus, the actual extent of an early tourist boom at this "mecca", if there really was one, cannot be determined from this or any other known sources
Despite the scarcity of eye-witness accounts, there is little doubt that after World War I there were numerous impromptu visits to the Fort by first-generation automobile tourists who braved the bad roads of the period to behold its faded glory, and then doubtless to push on with their primitive gas-buggies to admire the rumored wonders of Yellowstone Park. Though Wyoming's tourist industry was then but a fragile bud, it was being nurtured by Nebraska and Wyoming communities who were not averse to an influx of Eastern dollars. In 1920 disjointed segments of roads north of the North Platte, rather inaccurately dubbed "the North Platte Valley Highway," was designated a state road, eligible to receive federal aid, and there is the first known reference to the idea of capitalizing on the Old Oregon Trail by affixing its name to "a national highway." To promote it the "North Platte Valley Highway Association" came into being in 1922x.
Ezra Meeker, the apostle of Oregon Trail monuments and markers, who had made his first covered wagon memorial trek in 1906, turned up again in his old prairie schooner in 1920 to reawaken interest in the old Trail. Due in part to his influence Nebraska could now number over 50 such granite monuments, and the Nebraska Highway Department was giving the North Platte Valley Highway high priority. Talk of new or improved road construction was in the Wyoming air also, and Fort Laramie and Yellowstone Park were conspicuous among visible attractions that helped to initiate a vigorous road improvement programBecause of the decrepit condition of the Fort there was growing awareness that something would have to be done, sooner or later, if this promising tourist attraction was not to be lost.
Stock in Old Fort Laramie perked up perceptibly in 1923 when two dynamic promoters appeared on the scene, a newspaperman who would strongly reinforce George Houser's long lone campaign, and a developer who for the first time would attempt direct action as well as talk. For some years the Lingle Guide-Review had recognized the interest of the town of Fort Laramie with a "Fort Laramie Department" and the editor of this weekly did his bit to come out foursquare for history, admonishing once in a banner headline that "Fort Laramie People Should See to It that the Old Fort is Preserved as a Historic Spot." However, journalistic tub-thumping on behalf of the Old Fort would reach its crescendo in the short-lived Fort Laramie Scout, inaugurated in late 1923 and combined with the Goshen County News at Torrington in 1927. The proprietor of this free-wheeling periodical was L. G. (Pat) Flannery, who had occupied the old officer's quarters adjacent to the "Hunton House" at the Fort in 1919, becoming a confidante of the old man. This was the origin of Flannery's perennial agitation for preservation, which at times took on the aspect of a one-man crusade. The developer in question was Thomas Waters of Omaha, district freight representative of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In September of 1923 the Guide-Review had come up with a new suggestion, that "Fort Laramie is ideally suited for a dude ranch, which would attract many tourists on account of its historic appeal." The same article referred to "Harry Clark," also of Omaha, as the owner of the fort, but as we have seen what this party had an interest in was that portion of the Fort that had been held first by Wilde, the Cavalry Barracks area, not the more famous Officers Row of the parade ground, featuring the Sutler's Store and Old Bedlam. It was Waters who acquired an interest in this most significant and crucial section of the Fort from John Hunton in 1920, though Hunton continued to live on the premises until 1923, when he moved to TorringtonAlthough this absentee landlord conducted a ranch, of sorts, on adjoining land, his true objective was first revealed in the Gering Midwest, quoted in the Guernsey Gazette for October 26, 1923:
Thomas Waters, well known in western railroad circles, has an ambitious plan that contemplates making the site of old Fort Laramie one of the greatest summer resorts in the West. . . He has purchased a considerable portion of the old reservation together with the buildings thereon, and is now organizing a stock company for the purpose of improving the grounds, adding thereto and making a summer resort that will have a special appeal to our tourists, especially those who are interested in historic events and spots.
He plans the erection of a number of summer cottages, the establishment of a hotel and cafe big enough to take care of a big transient patronage, and the construction of a golf links that will be a big drawing card.
Mr. Waters was quoted further to the effect that "all these things will take time and money, but the plans are well formulated and some progress has already been made." Whatever one may think of the Waters plan to convert Fort Laramie into a pleasure resort, complete with lost golf balls, one must give him credit for his pre-vision of future U. S. Highway 26: "What we should be doing is turning the tide of tourist traffic through Gering, Scottsbluff and Mitchell, into old Fort Laramie with all its associations and memories, and thence on into Yellowstone Park Evidently Waters was notable to sell enough shares in his Fort Laramie enterprise to put his plans into effect right away, and there was a lull on the old Fort front in 1924 when attention was focussed on the Guernsey
Dam project. In 1925 a scheme of a different sort was concocted. In February of that year Houser called attention to a bill before the U. S. Congress offered by the Hon. Addison Smith of Idaho (House Joint Resolution 328) to designate as "The Old Oregon Trail" a system of federal highways between Council Bluffs, Iowa and Independence, Missouri to Seaside, Oregon and Olympia, Washington. Houser admonished "all Oregon Trail enthusiasts along the route to join in furthering the project." In a later issue he reported that, "a movement is on foot in which a number of Wyoming towns are interested in having a portion of old Fort Laramie set aside as a national monument for future generations. This movement is the result of a stir to have the old Oregon Trail made into a national highway
Houser's plea is the first recorded instance of Fort Laramie being associated with the magical term, "national monument," the official designation of "objects of historic and scientific interest" set aside by Presidential Proclamation by authority of the Antiquities Act of 1906. However, this term was not employed by the Wyoming State Legislature when it attempted to beef up prospects for the Smith bill with a petition to Congress, inspired by resolutions received from the Travis Post No. 5 of the American Legion, Department of Wyoming, and the Lions Club, both of Torrington. The language of the twin resolutions reveals for the first time an impressive depth of pro-preservation sentiment valley-wide, going well beyond the immediate vicinity of Guernsey and Fort Laramie:
WHEREAS, Old Fort Laramie is, from a historical stand point, one of the most important points in the West, and
WHEREAS, this property is now in private ownership and the buildings are rapidly falling into decay and will be in a state of ruin beyond repair, and
WHEREAS, the North Platte Valley Highway which passes this fort is the most direct route from the East to the Yellowstone National Park and is used by thousands of tourists each year, and
WHEREAS, numerous civic and patriotic organizations have joined in a request urging the Federal Government to re-purchase this property with the view of re-establishing, restoring, preserving and perpetuating to posterity this historical monument of pioneer days and making it accessible to visitors,
NOW THEREFORE, Be it Resolved, etc.
House Joint Memorial No. 4 was introduced by the Uinta and Goshen County delegations, with an amendment adding Fort Bridger for consideration, and referred to the Committee on Memorials. After some jockeying over fine distinctions of terminology, and debates about adding other sites to the list, the final bill, "Memorializing the Congress of the United States to set aside Old Fort Laramie and Old Fort Bridger and Independence Rock as Historic Reserves," was passed and approved February 25, 1925. [20]
Representative Addison Smith's final version of his bill, for the designation of an Oregon Trail Highway from Kansas City, Kansas to Vancouver, Washington, "which shall follow the Trail as closely as economic and topographic conditions permit," got nowhere in Congress for reasons which are abundantly evident in a
fascinating printed report on hearings before the Committee on Roads. It is fascinating because of the wealth of emigrant journals that are quoted at length to prove just which side of the Platte this or that emigrant party travelled, and the florid oratory of Congressional champions. (Willis Hawley, representative from Oregon whose parents were covered wagon emigrants, speaks of the Trail, "as a living thing, breathing of heroic self-sacrifice and devotion to duty. It is the trail which leads to the rainbow's end, the trail of all trails, your trail and mine.") However, discord prevailed among witnesses, not only as to the exact route of the Trail, but also just exactly what did constitute "the Oregon Trail," and whether to recognize such variants as the Mormon Trail and Pike's Peak Trail, not to mention the far more heavily travelled emigrant road to California, and the overarching question of the constitutionality of Congress getting into the business of interpreting fine points of American history. Though Fort Laramie was frequently mentioned in the hearings as one of the crown jewels of the Oregon and all other trails, there appears to have been no discussion of its preservationWhile State and Federal legislators and learned historians eulogized the distant Fort in abstract terms, the Fort itself was in mortal jeopardy. An article in the Guernsey Gazette for April 3, 1925 reveals that at that time the Fort narrowly escaped destruction from fire, at the same time dramatically demonstrating the dedication of local citizens in going to the rescue:
Mr. Cummings, dragline operator, discovered a blaze as he was returning from work, about 11:30 P.M., and roused the Latta Bros., who live on the place. The fire, of unknown origin, supposedly started in a pile of hay. A strong northwest wind was blowing and swept the flames through the corrals, burning fences, feedlots and everything in its path until it reached what is said to have been the old bakery, the extreme southeastern building of the group, which has been used for many years as a stable and blacksmith shop. There was barely time to save the livestock sheltered there. Roof, windows, woodwork and everything inflammable was destroyed, leaving only the stark, lime-concrete walls of the ancient structure.
The alarm was spread, and throughout the night men from town worked with the ranchers to save the other buildings. Lines of men carried water from the river to wet the walls and ground about surrounding structures, and the ceaseless guard against sparks continued until daylight. Mrs. Latta kept the watchers supplied with sandwiches and coffee.
Had the wind changed all the old Fort buildings would have been in great dangerWhile the immediate neighbors of Old Fort Laramie were obviously sold on the idea of saving it, there was a need to bring its desperate plight to the attention of a wider audience. The year 1926 must be viewed as a climax year in the process of focussing state-wide public opinion on the dire need to save Fort Laramie soon, if it was to be saved at all, and there is reason to believe that it was this Fort Laramie campaign which was the primary factor in the creation of the Historical Landmarks Commission of Wyoming the following year. Editors Flannery of the Scout and Houser of the Gazette were movers and shakers as well as reporters of events, and it was at this time that they enlisted other potent allies in the cause.
Early that year, following the fiasco of the Oregon Trail Highway proposal, Wyoming's then House Representative, Charles E. Winter, made an effort "to get favorable action for preservation of two forts as
national monuments that were the gateway to the West Laramie and Bridger." Judge Winter, the same fiery Fort Laramie orator of 1916, was also known as "the Bard of Wyoming," and a western novelist of some repute, as well as a jurist. In his efforts he enlisted the aid of General Charles King, famous novelist of western garrison life, then 85 and a military instructor at a college at Ripon, Wisconsin. But it appears that Winter lacked either the savvy or the clout to sell fellow Congressmen on the salvation of abandoned Wyoming forts. Information on the precise nature of his legislative proposal is lacking it evidently never reached any Committee for a hearing but his efforts were diluted by a project that appears to have had higher priority with him, a bill to provide for the erection of a monument to Sacajawea of Lewis and Clark fame, on the Fort Washakie Reservation near Lander, "in the 6th judicial district where Mr. Winter served as judge for seven years."

PART II: THE CRUSADE TO SAVE FORT LARAMIE
PART II: FOOTNOTES

1 - The Fort Laramie Military Reservation was turned over by the Army to the Interior Department, which supervised its break up into homesteads. The immediate Fort area, where surviving buildings are clustered, was divided among three private owners because of the arbitrary section lines resulting from General Land Office Surveys which ignored the integrity of the Fort. It so happens that Sections 20, 21, 28 and 29 of Township 26 North, Range 64 West, of the 6th Principal Meridian intersect at a point about half way between the Cavalry Barracks and the ruins of the Post Hospital. Thus Officers' Row and most of the parade ground (Hunton) are in NE 1/2, NE 1/2, Sec. 29. The south quadrant of the parade ground (Sandercock) is in SE 1/2, NE 1/2, Sec. 29; and the Cavalry Barracks and its neighbors (Wilde) are in NW 1/2, NW 1/2, Sec. 28. While ownerships shifted over the years, these three arbitrary divisions remained until consolidation by the State in 1937.
The picture is further confused by the fact that the parade ground axis is not oriented with standard compass bearings; it actually runs from SW to NE, or at about a 45 degree angle with township and section lines. (See map)
2 - Plan of Post, 1888, Cartographic Division, National Archives. Evidence of salvage transactions is indicated in the somewhat illegible John Hunton Letterbooks at the University of Wyoming Library, Special Collections. Sentiment re: Old Bedlam and the Sutler's Store may be assumed since there is no evidence that Hunton used these particular buildings for any discernible purpose.
The 14 intact structures of 1915 were: Old Army Bridge, Cavalry Barracks, Commissary Storehouse, New Bakery, Old Bakery, Old Guardhouse, Sutler's Store, Old Bedlam, Officers Quarters A, E and F, Magazine, Chicken House, and Privy. The 8 ruins were those of Sawmill, Administration Building, New Guardhouse, Hospital, Non-Com Quarters, and Officers Quarters B, C and D.
3 - The date 1913 appears at the end of the inscription. Since the context of the newspaper report clearly indicates that this was the marker dedicated in 1915, the discrepancy in dates doubtless results from the simple fact that the dedication was not held until 2 years after the inscription was carved. Possibly there was
a delay in erecting the marker until John Hunton or other sponsors could scrape together sufficient funds. Although they are not credited on the marker, it seems probable from the context of the newspaper story that the D.A.R. rather than the State of Wyoming was the principal sponsor. The 12-foot marker survives today (1978) in good condition.
4 - The other two markers dedicated that day were at Lingle, Wyoming and Henry, Nebraska.
5 - Hunton Letterbooks, op. cit.
6 - The Hebard speech is given verbatim in the Torrington Telegram, June 24, 1915.
7 - Guernsey Gazette, June 2, June 22, July 7, August 11, 1916.
8 - No copies of the indicated issue of the Midwest Magazine seem to have survived, either at the York Public Library or the Nebraska State Historical Society at Lincoln. Copies of later issues, however, are preserved by that Society.
9 - Merrill J. Mattes, Memorandum for the Files, July 10, 1945, Scotts Bluff National Monument. Mr. Maupin's visit to the Oregon Trail Museum there occurred on July 3, at his age 82. He had a checkered career as a Nebraska newspaperman and politician, See Who's Who in Nebraska, Nebraska Press Association, 1940, page 719.
Of his first Fort Laramie visit, Maupin "well remembers the Cavalry Barracks when it was still the hostelry of Joe Wilde. The night of his visit a dance was scheduled on the second floor, but not many people put in an appearance as the wind was blowing about 60 miles per hour."
Equally interesting is his Scotts Bluff adventure. "When he was the editor of a weekly paper in Gering, he relates that he conceived the idea of establishing a national park at Scotts Bluff to commemorate the Oregon Trail. U. S. Senator Hitchcock advised him to get in touch with U. S. Representative Moses Kinkaid. Kinkaid agreed that it should be a national park, but advised Maupin that it would be easier to make it a national monument since this involved only presidential proclamation, and such a proclamation automatically carried with it regular annual appropriation. The proclamation went through as planned in 1919 and Maupin was made custodian. However, "he thinks we was misinformed about the automatic appropriation since $12, per year is all he ever received."
10 - Letter of January 23, 1935, A. E. Sheldon to the Historical Landmarks Commission of Wyoming (HLCW), files HLCW, Wyoming State Archives. Manuscript. collections, Nebraska State Historical Society.
11 - Howard Lee Wilson, "The Bishop who Bid for Fort Laramie," Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 34, No. 2 (October 1962) 163-174.
12 - In 1926 James W. Auld bought the place by Sheriff's sale. In 1933 he deeded it to his wife Jessica. Goshen County Land Records.
The upper half of the Cavalry Barracks Hotel was divided in half, between guest rooms and dance-hall. The latter section, once a soldiers dormitory, was the only part of the building left in 1937 that still resembled the historic interior. The main floor was scrambled by adaptive uses, both before and after that date, a puzzle to restorationists. See Manuscript "Historic Structure Report I, 1874 Cavalry Barracks," John D. McDermott and James Sheire, National Park Service, 1970.
13 - Guernsey Gazette, April 9, 1920; May 19, 1922.
14 - Ibid. July 20, 1906; September 10, 1920; September 24, 1920. Meeker's visit to Fort Laramie in 1906 is recorded also in Howard Driggs and Ezra Meeker, Covered Wagon Centennial and Ox-Team Days (New York, 1932) 247-249. Even at that early date, says Meeker, "the old place is crumbling away, slowly disappearing with the memories of the past." If he actually visited the fort in 1920, such visit is not documented, but he did "follow the Trail" again that year.
15 - Lingle Guide-Review, January 1, 1923. This paper seems to have had a wobbly title, being sometimes called the Family News Review. Regarding the Flannery-Hunton relationship, see "This Old Gentleman John Hunton," being a transcript of a tape recording with L. G. Flannery by Pierre La Bonte, Jr. in 1963. Flannery (1894-1964) edited and published the John Hunton diaries to 1889. (Vols. I to V published by Flannery himself, Vol. VI by A. H. Clark, Glendale, California) Unpublished diaries after that date are in the possession of Mrs. L. G. Flannery of Cheyenne. "It is her policy that the diaries remain locked up for the time being." Letter of April 15, 1977, Billie (Flannery) Griske to Merrill Mattes.
16 - Lingle Guide-Review, September 13, 1923. Brothers Harry and Tom Latta and families were long term tenants of the Cavalry Barracks and the Commissary, originally engaged by Clarke but continuing there into the 1930s. McDermott and Sheire, op. cit.
17 - Hunton mortgaged a portion of his property to Thomas Waters for $14,000, October 18, 1920. Final settlement, with deed to Thomas Waters, was in December, 1925. Goshen County Records. Mattes interview with Curtiss Root, Torrington, Nov. 1, 1977.
18 - Guernsey Gazette, October 26, 1923.
19 - Ibid., February 6, 1925; March 6, 1925.
20 - Session Laws of Wyoming (1925) 270-271; House Journal of 18th State Legislature of Wyoming (1925) 169; 213; 373; 409; 413; 571; 586; 591.
21 - The Old Oregon Trail: Hearings Before the Committee on Roads. House of Representatives, 68 Congress, 2nd Session, on House Joint Resolution 232, House Joint Resolution 328, Senate Resolution 2053 (Government Printing office, 1925).
22 - This fire changed the score on surviving structures as follows: 13 buildings intact, and 9 standing ruins.
23 - Guernsey Gazette, February 19, 1926
24 - Ibid., March 12, 1926; Driggs and Meeker, op. cit., 10-26.
25 - Guernsey Gazette, June 14, 1926
26 - Ibid., July 9, 1926.
27 - Ibid., September 10, 1926.
28 - Ibid., July 23, 1926
29 - Fort Laramie Scout, July 29, 1926.
30 - Ibid., April 22, 1926.
31 - Ibid., September 2, 1926.
32 - William H. Jackson (1843-1942), nearly a centenarian, was one of the last Civil War veterans. In 1930 he became Research Secretary for the Oregon Trail Memorial Association. In 1936 he helped to dedicate the Oregon Trail Museum at Scotts Bluff. In 1943 he in turn was memorialized by the dedication of new Jackson wing of that museum, which houses his original pencil sketches of 1866 as well as later water colors. See W.H.J., Time Exposure, New York, 1940; LeRoy R. Hafen, editor, The Diaries of William H. Jackson, Glendale, 1959.
Robert S. Ellison was a doer, not a writer, though he authored two booklets of note: Independence Rock (Natrona County Historical Society, 1930), and Fort Bridger (Historical Landmark Commission of Wyoming, 1931). He Became a Regional Director of the OTMA. Driggs and Meeker, op. cit., 65.
Ellison footed the bill for Jackson's seasonal treks westward, since the famous artist-photographer had only a veteran's pension. Their travels set a precedent for the OTMA treks which became annual events beginning in 1930. Theirs was a historic friendship.
33 - The National Park Service was created by a Congressional Act of 1916, at the instigation of Stephen H. Mather and Secretary of the Interior, Franklin K. Lane. Mather was the first Director.
34 - Guernsey Gazette, August 27, 1926.
35 - Martin S. Hartman's name appears at intervals in Goshen County land records, in association with Waters, beginning on February 18, 1927, and ending on May 7, 1931. The exact nature of the brief partnership eludes inquiry. Joseph G. Masters, Regional Director for the OTMA in Omaha, confided to Joseph Weppner, HLCW, that, "I think Hartman is rather more active in the whole affair." Letter of October 17, 1929, HLCW files.
36 - No blueprints for the Waters-Hartman restoration project, if they ever existed outside of these gentlemen's heads, can be found. The flooring in the adobe portion of the Sutler's Store, allegedly restored, was missing in 1937. Presumably it was removed by unidentified parties searching for coins.
37 - HLCW, First Bicentennial Report (1927-1928).
38 - Ibid., HLCW, Minute Books, 1927-1929, Wyoming State Archives.
39 - Guernsey Gazette, August 15, 1928; Session Laws of Wyoming (1929) 259-60.
40 - HLCW Minute Books.
41 - Ibid.,
42 - Fort Laramie Scout, March 27, 1930.
43 - Fort Laramie Scout, August 21, 1930; Driggs and Meeker, op. cit. 73-74; HLCW, Second Biennial Report (1929-1930), 12-13.
44 - "The owners of old Fort Laramie, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Waters, and their daughter, of Omaha; J. W. Auld of Red Cloud, Nebraska; and Mr. and Mrs. George Sandercock of Fort Laramie were all present for the Covered Wagon Centennial and Pioneers Reunion last Friday, and showed the committee every courtesy. Mrs. Sandercock prepared a special dinner in her home for the guests of honor." Fort Laramie Scout, August 21, 1930.
As a fund raising venture the Fort Laramie Historical Society seems to have had a short life. However, it was still in existence, at least nominally, as late as 1937. This original organization is not to be confused with the present Fort Laramie Historical Association.
45 - Fort Laramie Scout, September 11, 1930; HLCW, Second Biennial Report, 14.
46 - Fort Laramie Scout, July 16, 1931.
47 - HLCW Minutes of meeting, June 7, 1931 at Fort Laramie; HLCW Third Biennial Report (1931-1932), 9-10; Session Laws of Wyoming (1931), Chapter 138. House Bill 153. General Appropriation Act for two years ending March 31, 1933. Section 21. At this time the legislature appropriated $25,000 but this was arbitrarily reduced to $15,000 by Governor Clarke.
48 - Ibid.; Fort Laramie Scout, July 16, 1931.
49 - HLCW Minutes, meeting of November 29, 1931.
50 - Fort Laramie Scout, March 10, 1932; Letter March 11, 1932, Joseph Weppner, HLCW, to Robert
Ellison, files HLCW,
51 - Fort Laramie Scout, April 21, 1932; May 19, 1932.
52 - Ibid., March 10, 1932.
53 - HLCW, Minutes, meeting of December 22, 1933.
54 - HLCW, Fourth Biennial Report (1933-1934), 11-12.
55 - Letter of October 14, 1936, Bryant B. Brooks to Warren Richardson, files, HLCW.
56 - Fort Laramie Scout, October 6, 1933. The next public celebration at the Fort was held on August 15, 1935 to observe the 75th anniversary ("Diamond Jubilee") of the Pony Express. According to the Scout for August 8, 1935, "more than 1,000 persons gathered. . . to witness the re-ride of the Pony Express. The Boy Scout rider eluded Indian pursuers to deliver the mail sack to the speaker's stand." Dr. L. C. Hunt, Secretary of State for Wyoming, delivered the principal address. The ubiquitous William H. Jackson was present, and Mrs. Sandercock served another of her famous veranda dinners to special guests - turkey this time, instead of chicken.
57 - Fort Laramie Scout, September 15, 1932. In his report Flannery expressed concern about the cost of such a far-flung development, including Fort Laramie restoration. This is the only recorded instance where his normal enthusiasm for Fort Laramie was tempered by second thoughts: "It is a fatuous form of self-deception to imagine that we can expand the activities of our government without very high taxes." These misgivings seem quaint in an age when the Federal debt approaches $1,000,000,000,000., and the annual operating cost of Fort Laramie National Historic Site alone now exceeds $300,000.
58 - Fort Laramie Scout, July 6, 1933.
59 - Files, Scotts Bluff National Monument. Harold Cook (1887-1962) subsequently became Superintendent of the CCC Camp and interim Custodian of that monument, vice A. N. Mather. He was relieved of that post after an altercation with Secretary Ickes over political appointments to the CCC foreman personnel roster.
60 - The National Park Service proposal, motivated by instructions from the White House to develop projects to generate jobs during the Depression, is reflected in news stories appearing in Scottsbluff, Cheyenne, and Torrington papers. The concept bobbed up for the 4th or 5th time in the form of a Bill for a "Trails West National Park", extending from Ash Hollow to Fort Laramie, introduced by Representatives Virginia Smith of Nebraska and Teno Roncalio of Wyoming in 1976.
61 - Fort Laramie Scout, February 8, March 15, and March 22, 1934 quoted in the Torrington Telegram for February 22, 1973.
62 - Fort Laramie Scout, February 14 and May 30, 1935. Flannery correspondence File, Fort Laramie National Historic Site, February 6 to February 15, 1935.
63 - Flannery file, Greever to L. G. Flannery, March 26, 1935. Flannery to O'Mahoney March 22, 1935. Ellison to Weppner, July 18, 1935, HLCW files.
64 - Mattes was stationed at Scotts Bluff National Monument until 1946, when he was transferred to Omaha to become first, Historian, Missouri River Basin Surveys and, in 1950, Regional Historian, a post he held for 17 years. From November, 1936 to April, 1938 Engineer Charles E. Randels became "Acting Custodian" and CCC Camp Director while Mattes as Historian devoted full time to developing research and public service programs. In 1938 Mattes resumed full-time custodianship of Scotts Bluff, at the same time becoming "Acting Custodian" for new Fort Laramie National Monument. He continued in that capacity until October 1938. While in Omaha Mattes became the principal regional coordinator of Fort Laramie restoration projects.
65 - Over 40 years of collaboration between Mattes and Henderson is reflected in the book, Great Platte River Road (Nebraska State Historical Society, 1969) which includes two chapters on Fort Laramie. See also Mattes and Henderson, "The Pony Express from St. Joseph to Fort Laramie," Nebraska History, Vol. 41, No. 2, (June, 1960) 83-122.
66 - Files, Scotts Bluff National Monument. Mattes to Flannery, December 12, 1935; Flannery to Mattes, January 4, 1936; Mattes to Flannery, January 14, 1936. Prior to the creation of Fort Laramie National Monument no historical report was requested, although voluminous data was supplied to the Regional Office, reflected in SBNM files. Following the acquisition of the site by the State, Mattes was assigned to initiate a formal Fort Laramie research program. In 1941 he was designated Historian for Fort Laramie, while continuing to serve as Scotts Bluff Custodian. (The title "Custodian" for those in charge of national monuments was converted to "Superintendent" in 1949.)
67 - "Proposal prepared by R. L. Spurlock, Project Manager, Resettlement Administration, Land Utilization Division," Douglas, Wyoming, October, 1935. Flannery file: LGF to Will G. Metz, August 15, 1935; LGF to O'Mahoney, July 15, 1936.
68 - Flannery file: Demaray to Greever, August 11, 1936; R. M. Davis to L. G. Flannery, August 4, 1936.
69 - Flannery file: L. G. Flannery to Mattes, January 18, 1936; O'Mahoney to Flannery, January 20, 1936; Greever to Flannery, January 25, 1936.
70 - Because of discontent by some Wyoming citizens with the Presidential Proclamation re: Jackson Hole National Monument, which erupted into a court case at Sheridan, Wyoming in 1944 (State of Wyoming vs. Paul R. Franke, Superintendent), the Congressional settlement re: Grand Teton National Park in 1950 provided that there would be no further national monuments created in Wyoming except with Congressional sanction thus, in effect, amending the Antiquities Act of 1906. See Robert W. Righter, "The Brief, Hectic Life of Jackson Hole National Monument," The American West, Vol. XIII, No. 6 (November-December, 1976)
71 - This fact is "strange" because normal NPS procedure, at least subsequently, is that any area proposed
for the National Park System is subject to rather thorough inspection by specialists, with one or more comprehensive printed reports for perusal by the Director, the Secretary of the Interior, Congressional Committees, the Bureau of the Budget, and the NPS Advisory Board. Albright in 1932 and Bryant in 1933 probably visited the Fort, but if so we find no record of their impressions. Such visits would have been only incidental to their respective grand tours of North Platte Valley historic sites.
72 - Files, Scotts Bluff National Monument, including Historian Mattes' monthly report for September, 1936; also, Mattes' personal recollections.
73 - Memorandum, April 27, 1948, Coordinating Superintendent David H. Canfield, Rocky Mountain National Park, to the Regional Director, Region Two, Omaha. Files, Fort Laramie National Historic Site.
74 - Wyoming State Tribune, September 17, 1936.
75 - Correspondence files, HLCW, Wyoming State Archives.
76 - R. J. Rymill (1891-1976), long-term resident and businessman of Fort Laramie town, was in the Fort Laramie acquisition picture beginning in 1929 when he became a member of one of the two appraisal teams in that initial effort. He later became the first official custodian of Fort Laramie after the area was acquired by the State, before its relinquishment to the United States. Mr. Rymill also played a prominent role in Fort Laramie commemorative affairs, notably in 1930, 1937, and 1949. Mattes interview with Anne (Rymill) Pomeroy 10/28/77.
77 - Correspondence files, HLCW: Brooks to Richardson, October 14, 1936; Weppner to Richardson, October 16, 1936; Richardson to Weppner, October 16 and December 11, 1936.
78 - L. G. Flannery file, FLNHS: Miller to Flannery, November 13, 1936; Flannery to Miller, November 17, 1936; Miller to Rymill, November 19, 1936.
R. J. Rymill files, FLNHS: Rymill to Miller, December 10, 1936; Rymill to Cather, December 9; Cather to Rymill, December 18; Rymill to Thomas Waters, December 19.
Mollie Sandercock was the widow of George, son of Harriet, "the widow Sandercock" who bought in at the 1890 auction. Mattes interview with Ada Mary Melonuk at Fort Laramie 11/1/77.
R. C. Cather and Jessica Auld, both of whom claim Red Cloud, Nebraska as their home town, were related to the famous novelist, Willa Cather, according to Dave Hieb, Fort Laramie Superintendent, 1947-1958, who was classmate of son Tommy Auld at Doane College, Nebraska, in 1929. Mattes interview with Hieb at Littleton, Colorado, August, 1977.
79 - The Rymill correspondence was presented in two parts. The bulk of the significant correspondence was included in that presented to the park by the widow, Nancy Rymill, now of Laramie, Wyoming. The map was among items presented by his daughter, Mrs. Pomeroy, to Mattes, at Fort Laramie, November 3, 1977.
80 - Merrill J. Mattes, recollection of conversation with Don Alexander, Omaha, 1945.
81 - R. J. Rymill to Governor Miller, January 14, 1937.
82 - HLCW Minute Book II.
83 - Session Laws of Wyoming (1937), 110, 459, 461, 565, 611. House Journal of the 24th State Legislature of Wyoming (1937), 5, 31, 160, 284, 297, 340, 457.
84 - Fort Laramie Scout, March 11 and 25, 1937, quoted in the Torrington Telegram, February 23, 1973.
85 - "Fort Laramie was discussed at the March 25-26, 1937 meeting of the Advisory Board. This particular session, focussed on the preservation of historic and archeologic sites. Fort Laramie was listed as one of the many locations recommended for acceptance. . . as part of the Historic Sites Survey; however, there was no detailed discussion of Fort Laramie per se." Letter of May 4, 1977 from Richard C. Crawford, Natural Resources Branch, Civil Archives Division, National Archives, to Merrill J. Mattes. It appears that there was never an official NPS report on Fort Laramie as the basis for decision. Instead, there was a compilation of data sent by Dan Greenburg for the HLCW. Letter of January 18, 1936, Greenburg to Mattes, and exchanges of December, 1936 between Mattes and Association Historian Hagen of the Regional Office confirm this. Scotts Bluff NM files.
86 - HLCW Minute Book II. This breaks down into 58.91 acres for Waters, 76.80 for Auld, and 78.70 for Sandercock. The 213.69 total given in the Minute Book is a simple mathematical error.
87 - Fort Laramie Scout, July 8, 1937; Scottsbluff Star-Herald, July 6, 1937; Mattes, Scotts Bluff Historian's Report for July, 1937, files, Scotts Bluff National Monument.
1. Interim State Custodianship, 1937-1938

In April, 1937 R. J. Rymill of Fort Laramie town, who had played a key role in negotiations for the Old Fort property, was designated as custodian of the site by the Historical Landmark Commission of Wyoming (hereafter designated HLCW). Although this was a practical step in view of Rymill's residence just three miles distant from the Fort, it was also a gesture to honor a conscientious local citizen who had given vigorous and crucial support to the successful crusade to save Old Fort Laramie. Except for his chairmanship of the great public victory celebration of July 5, by way of dedicating the site to State ownership, the records are silent on any actions taken by him or the Commission at the site during his brief incumbency. At its annual meeting of July 31, 1937 in Cheyenne the HLCW passed a motion "that R. J. Rymill be assured of the appreciation of the Commission for acting in his temporary assignment without compensation." Such was now terminated and R. C. Hauf and his wife were designated "caretakers" effective August 1. Their reward for keeping an eye on things was their temporary use of the old Hunton residence, which the National Park Service would later designate Officers Quarters F. The Haufs had been engaged by Thomas Waters to farm his land and the Commission had evidence that both had "shown keen interest and diligence in the preservation of the propertyPresumably they had no maintenance obligations but were simply to keep intruders and vandals under surveillance. It is not known how well they discharged their function, or how long they remained on the premises. We find no further reference to them in State or Federal records, and so must assume that their role was brief.
The HLCW had indicated to the Governor the need for $3,000 over and above the purchase price "to take care of Fort Laramie until such time when the Government took it over, as the fencing of the property would have to be taken care of immediately; also, the placing of a caretaker attended to." We know that neither Custodian Rymill nor Caretaker Hauf received compensation. Though confirmation is lacking, we assume that the State did survey the boundaries and provided the original fencing, since this was part of the justification for the $3,000 on top of land acquisition needs. However, whatever fencing was provided must have been incomplete or otherwise inadequate since early Park Service records indicate further need for boundary fencing and fence repairsDan W. Greenburg, Director of the Wyoming State Planning Board and former Publicity Director for the HLCW, seems to have functioned as the principal liaison man with the National Park Service, keeping that agency posted on developments. [4] Presumably it was at his behest that on September 20, 1937 Director Arno B. Cammerer wrote C. E. Randels of Gering, Nebraska, Acting Custodian of Scotts Bluff National Monument, that he was to be the Service representative on Fort Laramie matters locally, since a plan to acquire the place was in the works. [5] Randels, an experienced engineer who had been put in charge of Scotts Bluff affairs during Civilian Conservation Corps operations there, served as Fort Laramie liaison man until June 1938 when the Scotts Bluff camp was disbanded, and he was transferred to Denver. Since the Fort remained technically under State ownership during this period it cannot be asserted correctly that C. E. Randels was the first "Acting Custodian" of Fort Laramie National Monument. Neither was it correct to state, as was sometimes done in his correspondence, that Fort Laramie had been placed under his "supervision", since there is no way one can legally supervise something not in legal custody.
It was this very technicality that made Randels' assignment so difficult. In effect, State of Wyoming officials had a hard time recognizing his limitation as a mere liaison man, and in the absence of a fully responsible functioning State Custodian on the premises, the State somehow expected him to provide actual custodial or protective services. Living in Gering, over 50 miles away, and having a CCC program there to supervise, he could get to Fort Laramie only occasionally, look over the situation, and write letters to the Director deploring evidence of continuing vandalism. During this awkward period, fortunately, the vandalism was relatively mild, and no buildings suffered drastically beyond their already forlorn state. This is remarkable since publicity concerning the Fort and its pending status as a National Monument brought out premature visitors who, in the absence of anyone to restrain them, occasionally broke into the decrepit buildings and helped themselves to souvenirs. Perhaps the most serious infraction during this period was the application of a cutting-torch to the door of the old safe imbedded in the Sutler's office, by parties unknown, in the vain hope of finding valuables.
Although R. J. Rymill had supposedly been relieved of custodial responsibility, there is evidence that, possibly through the default of Caretaker Hauf, he got back into the picture, at least to the extent of remaining the local contact for the State's liaison man, Dan Greenburg. In any event the ever-helpful Rymill reappeared in March 1938 to assist Greenburg and Randels in the delicate matter of evicting certain unidentified parties, presumably tenant holdovers from the era of private ownership. Anticipating an early relinquishment to the United States, Greenburg advised Director Arno Cammerer that these tenants would move March 1, and that a Park Service representative should be on hand to prevent the simultaneous disappearance of "moveable historical relics." Although this would appear to have been a State responsibility at this point, Regional Director Tom Allen in Omaha directed Randels to proceed to the Fort at once. There he was joined by Rymill, to find the alleged relics intact but the "unsatisfactory" tenants in no hurry to vacate. When they final did, Randels and Rymill on their own initiative persuaded "a reliable farmer," Herman Harmeier, to occupy one of the Officers Quarters, assuming care-takership in exchange for free rentThe most significant happening during the Rymill-Randels interim was a Meeting held at the Fort in mid-November, 1937 "for the purpose of discussing the problem of the repair and reconditioning of the buildings." This was the first planning session ever held at the Fort by the National Park Service, anticipating National Monument status. Because of the importance of this kick-off meeting, it is appropriate
to call the roll of the principals present: R. S. Ellison, former chairman of the HLCW who had started the official state ball rolling in 1927; Dan Greenburg, the State's liaison man; R. J. Rymill and George Houser, local leaders in the Crusade; Landscape Architect Howard W. Baker and Architect Wilfred Hill of Omaha, representing the Regional Office; T. L. Green of Scottsbluff; C. E. Randels, NPS liaison officer, and Merrill J. Mattes, Scotts Bluff Historian. After a thorough inspection, agreement was reached that architectural research and design work should have highest priority for funding; meanwhile a project should be initiated for a complete set of measured drawings of all historic buildings. [8]
Although the Fort was not yet a National Monument, the measured drawings project could be undertaken as legitimate Government assistance to the State of Wyoming under the terms of the 1936 Park, Parkway and Recreational Study Act. Accordingly a project was set up under the technical direction of Wilfred Hill, assisted by E. L. Hoyt, Scotts Bluff CCC Camp foreman, and ten enrollees of the Lake Guernsey CCC Camp. The thirty day project for making a "Topographic and Building Survey of Fort Laramie" began November 29 and continued until Christmas, with the production of photos and preliminary drawings, and discovery of the fact that much mystery cloaked the architecture of the time-shattered historic buildings which could only be dispelled by intensive study. This was the initial impetus of a Fort Laramie research program of several years duration by Historian Mattes. It was launched on the site during a visit of early December there with Paul Henderson, Oregon Trail historian of Bridgeport, and given official blessing in a later December visit there by Mattes in company with Chief Historian Ronald F. Lee of Washington, D.C. and Regional Historian Edward Hummel of OmahaOn May 3, 1938 Dan Greenburg wrote the Director a fateful letter:
This is to advise you that on Monday, May 2, on behalf of the Historical Landmark Commission of Wyoming, the deed conveying the land of Old Fort Laramie, comprising 214.41 acres, to the U. S. Government, was placed on record with the County Clerk of Torrington, Wyoming, in Goshen County.
The opinion of the Solicitor, in which were pointed out slight defects in the title which you conveyed to us some time ago, has been perfected and the papers in connection thereto have been filed. . . All of the factors involved in the title matters have been cleared up.
In this connection I made a trip to Old Fort Laramie yesterday and asked Mr. Charles E. Randels. . . at Gering, Nebraska to meet me at Torrington and go with me and on that occasion we formally turned over to Mr. Randels possession of the property. . .
We feel confident that the National Park Service will use its every consistent effort to preserve and protect the property against vandalism and to make it a shrine worthy of the standards of the National Park Service.
No doubt you will take proper steps for the assignment of a ranger or official to live on the property. In this connection I wish to bring to your attention that already hundreds of tourists are visiting that area and thousands more will be there during the summer, and I find like any other place where it is not properly policed, the public is no respecter of the rights of ownership and do not hesitate to damage property, etc. etc.
Concurrently, Randels wrote to Regional Director Allen that Greenburg had emphasized that the State would take no more responsibility concerning the area, and that he would need some funds for the procurement of padlocks and lumber "to nail up some of the windows and doors so that relic hunters do not carry away the buildings." He likewise urged the assignment of a ranger in residence to patrol the area. Allen cautioned that Greenburg's action was "a little previous" since the Service had no authority to accept the property until final clearance of title by the Solicitor, acceptance by the Secretary of the Interior, and issuance of a Presidential Proclamation. Furthermore, he pointed out that the Director's request for $2,640 to manage the anticipated Fort Laramie National Monument in Fiscal Year 1939 (the year beginning July 1, 1938) had been turned down by the Bureau of the Budget. Likewise rejected was a six-year program totalling $70,000 which had been proposed to the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, to make a start on "stabilization, restoration and repair."
In effect, Randels was told to carry on, "keeping as close a watch on the area as is physically possible under present arrangements." The frustrated engineer did his best with a thankless job, reporting further deterioration and vandalism which he attempted to combat by "nailing up windows and doors with old discarded lumber from Scotts Bluff." Peering into the future, he suggested the wisdom of placing Fort Laramie under management of the Scotts Bluff National Monument Custodian, with a ranger to be stationed at the Fort. Mr. Cammerer concurred in this plan, with the result that the 1940 budget of $2,610 (effective July 1, 1939) provided $1,860. for a ranger at Fort Laramie. Later this organizational decision was quietly reversed, presumably upon protest by Dan Greenburg, who was mindful of the earlier uproar in Wyoming caused by the thought that Fort Laramie might become a mere satellite of Scotts Bluff National Monument. Although Scotts Bluff personnel would continue their technical involvement in Fort Laramie affairs for several more years, the Fort would be separately managed by its own Custodian as soon as it was on its own financial feet.


2. Early Federal Custodianship, 1938-1939


On May 31, 1938 the Scotts Bluff CCC Camp was terminated, and on June 22 Randels received a telegram from Regional Director Allen instructing him to report to Rocky Mountain National Park for duty. He was also to relinquish the full custodianship of Scotts Bluff to the original appointee, Merrill J. Mattes, who had served as Historian during the CCC interim. Thus automatically Mattes also assumed the role of liaison officer for Fort Laramie and, when Fort Laramie National Monument was officially proclaimed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 16, 1938, he became the first official Custodian of that new park area, a fact confirmed by Associate Director A. E. Demaray's letter to him of August 12: "Mr. Randels' duties as Acting Custodian [of Scotts Bluff] included supervision of Fort Laramie, and as those duties have now been assigned to you, Fort Laramie National Monument has been placed under your supervision Mattes' role as Acting Custodian for Fort Laramie was of limited duration, and it was secondary to his Scotts Bluff duties. Though now once more the full-fledged Custodian of Scotts Bluff, he was technically only interim or "Acting Custodian" of Fort Laramie. No full-fledged resident Custodian could be hired until funds would become available as of July 1, 1939. Nevertheless, Fort Laramie as a Federal civilian establishment began under his aegis, and it began auspiciously with an action program to initiate area improvements.


As of July 16, 1938 Old Fort Laramie had no where to go but up, for it had reached its nadir as a decrepit "ghost fort." Buildings, many of them in recent use as cow-barns, pig-pens, and chicken sheds, were a shambles, some seemingly on the verge of collapse from decades of weathering, rigged alterations, and vandalism. The historic picture was further blurred by the existence of extraneous sheds, fences, feed-troughs, windmills, piles of manure and layers of trash.


By Service agreement the Harmeier family remained in the Officers Quarters adjoining the Sutler's Store (the Hunton House), to provide some degree of on-site protection against vandals Mattes and Scotts Bluff rangers re-boarded windows and padlocked doors. Immediately after the Proclamation, E. A. Hummel joined him on an inspection tour and together they formulated a program for a CCC project, broken into three main parts: topographical survey, archeological reconnaissance, and "Landscaping, Undifferentiated," a fancy term for general clean-up and obliteration of non-historic features.
On August 4 Hummel advised Mattes that the Bureau of Reclamation had approved a Fort Laramie work force of 20 enrollees from the Lake Guernsey CCC Camp, to operate for 60 days, beginning mid-August. Men and equipment would be transported daily from Lake Guernsey. Archeologist G. Hubert Smith was dispatched on assignment from Fort Ridgeley, Minnesota, to supervise archeological investigations and coordinate clean-up work to ensure against the accidental destruction of bona fide historic features. Engineer Foreman Allen was assigned from the Fort Casper CCC Camp to survey the boundaries, while Foreman Lundy of the Guernsey Camp ran work crews. The entire project was directed by Mattes who made frequent inspection trips from Scotts Bluff, following initial project review with the foremen.


Among results of the fortuitous CCC project were vastly improved appearance of the grounds, the first reliable site map to record accurately all identifiable historic features, and preliminary archeology which delineated hidden building sites and laid the groundwork for the area's unique collection of military period artifacts. Except for the removal of dung and debris, and the locking up or boarding up of doors and windows, no actual work on historic buildings themselves was undertaken at the time, in the absence of any funds for the purpose or any preservation priorities. A by-product of the archeological survey was confirmation of the fact that the Monument area excluded over one-half of the 1890 Fort grounds, primarily the Quartermaster and stabling area.


It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of having knowledgeable professionals in control of the clean-up operation. The salvaging of a historic site by amateurs, however enthusiastic, too often results in irreparable damage to or loss of valuable but unrecognized features. Mattes was uniquely qualified to oversee this sensitive operation because of his previous pioneering research work on Fort Laramie historic structures. Prior to Federal acquisition, from January to April, 1938 the Regional Office had arranged for him to be on special assignment, to gather all possible data in anticipation of Monument status. His travels to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. as well as libraries of the Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado Historical Societies resulted in an extensive card-file bibliography, and the first official Fort Laramie research report "A Preliminary Report on the Evolution of Public Buildings at Old Fort Laramie" which laid the foundation for all subsequent research on historic structuresOn August 22 Dr. Howard R. Driggs, William H. Jackson and other notables of the Oregon Trail Memorial Association convened at the Oregon Trail Museum at Scotts Bluff, on one of their series of annual treks along western trails. This occasion was highlighted by Jackson's staking the site of his 1866 camp in Mitchell Pass as a boy bull-whacker. The following evening the group visited Fort Laramie and had a roaring campfire meeting in the grove west of the parade ground. On the 24th Tom Allen, Regional Director, visited the Fort with Mattes, the first high-level Park Service official to do so following its establishment Mattes had been offered a Graduate Fellowship in Archeology at Yale University for the 1938-1939 academic year, which had the approval of the Director. Accordingly, on September 15 he departed for nine months on a leave-without-pay basis. He urged assignment of Charles E. Humberger, seasonal ranger, to interim management of Scotts Bluff and Fort Laramie, Because of problems relating to Humberger's non-permanent status he was not given such authority until November 1, by which time both areas had been placed under the administrative coordination of David H. Canfield, Superintendent, Rocky Mountain National Park. During the September 15-October 31 interim David D. Condon, Naturalist of Yellowstone
Park was ordered on special assignment to Scotts Bluff, but without custodial designation. The records show Mattes as "Coordinating Custodian, Fort Laramie, July 16 to October 5, 1938," when Canfield was named "Coordinating Superintendent."


During the autumn and winter of 1938-1939 Humberger kept on the run, supervising an Emergency Relief Administration (ERA) road project at Scotts Bluff and making periodic visits to the Fort. He helped wrap up the CCC clean-up operation there, installed a few signs, and made emergency repairs to the historic structures resulting from damage that winter by abnormally high winds. In February Ranger Bert Fraser of Rocky Mountain National Park took over from Humberger and became the first NPS official to be actually stationed at the Fort. Fraser, a park ranger on special assignment, styled himself "Acting Caretaker." Neither he nor Humberger bore the official "Acting Custodian" designation at Fort Laramie. The faithful Harmeiers, who received no pay or designation whatsoever, moved out when Fraser moved in. A registration book that they kept voluntarily showed 3,000 visitors to the embryonic National Monument since its inception.


It was fortunate that Bert was a bachelor, because living conditions at the Fort at this stage were atrocious. Utilizing help, materials, and furniture provided by Rocky Mountain (RMNP) he rigged up quarters of sorts in the old Cavalry Barracks. There were successive plagues of bats, rats, rattlers, and feral cats. During his four-month incumbency the temperature swung from 17 below to 107 above, golf-ball size hail shattered windows, and high dry winds further jeopardized the precious ruins. The approach road was one continuous wash-board and the "sanitation system" consisted of a primitive privy in close proximity to the meager water supply.


On his own initiative the undaunted Fraser accomplished quite a bit. He placated visitors, put up boundary markers, kept a good photographic record, and did a creditable job of public relations by supervising the installation of museum exhibits in the Lake Guernsey Museum, made by the NPS Museum Laboratory, in Berkeley, California. He interviewed old-timers and tracked down artifacts, notably one of the oak-and-iron doors missing from the Old Guardhouse. He set up the area's first museum exhibit, in the building later identified as Officers Quarters E, and made valuable notes on authentic Fort Laramie artifacts and documents located in private homes in the vicinity. In effect, he started an unbroken 40-year tradition of enthusiastic, energetic, and imaginative Fort Laramie resident Custodians (later to be designated Superintendents) even though he never bore that title.


Fraser also had general supervision of two emergency work crews that the Regional Office in Omaha had promoted. The ERA provided forty men to clean out several miles of irrigation ditches that served the Fort area but had long been unused, and to make other improvements, such as a temporary parking area near the Cavalry Barracks. Among other notable accomplishments were fumigation of old stable and pen areas, emergency stabilization (propping-up) of Old Bedlam, boxing in of all the dangerously weakened brick chimneys, and the fabrication and erection of a flag-pole. On May 20 the American flag flew officially for the first time in 49 years. The ERA crew was phased out early, to be reassigned to help ranchers combat a grasshopper invasion of the Region, but in its stead another CCC crew from Lake Guernsey was launched. This consisted of 20 enrollees, five to work as guides to the increasing numbers of visitors, and 15 assigned to Archeologist G. Hubert Smith, now transferred from Fort Ridgeley to RMNP jurisdictionMeanwhile, back in Washington, D.C., serious thought was being given to the Fort's future. At Tom Allen's
request of March 27, 1939, Chief Historian Lee and Acting Chief of Planning W. G. Carnes put together the first formal policy statement re: Fort Laramie development, "to serve as a guide to preservation and planning." Several of their pronouncements became gospel for program planners for the next 40 years: (1) The primary objective was to save the old buildings by the best preservation techniques. (2) Restoration would be undertaken cautiously, and only after thorough historical and architectural research. (3) There would be no reconstruction of vanished buildings. (4) The final injunction was that "the headquarters and museum development be located outside the area occupied by the Fort proper," to facilitate administrative control, prevent the confusion of new work and old, and avoid efforts to adapt the historic buildings to modern uses for which they were poorly suited (As of 1978 this last precept had not been fulfilled. For 40 years various historic buildings have been occupied as "temporary" headquarters, museum, quarters, workshops, garage, etc., and long-standing proposals to construct such facilities on the east or right bank of the Laramie, opposite the parade ground area, are still in contention.)


While Fraser was still on the premises Regional Architects Wilfred Hill and Leslie Wilikie resumed the long-range program for the preparation of measured drawings of all of the surviving Fort structures. This was to be done in accordance with the guidelines prescribed by the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), and the original drawings, along with record photographs, were to be placed on permanent file with the Library of Congress. Over the decades since this survey was authorized by the Historic Sites Act of 1935 thousands of buildings in the United States have been so recorded. Fort Laramie was one of the first historic places west of the Mississippi River to benefit from this program.


Hill and Wilkie also initiated field studies and plans for "the restoration program we hope will be gotten underway in the future." Also, finishing touches were given to the boundary survey and area mapping by a Regional Office crew, and permanent survey markers were placed.

PART III: THE RESTORATION OF FORT LARAMIE
3. Custodian Jess H. Lombard, 1939-1944


The first full-time residential Custodian of Fort Laramie National Monument was Jess H. Lombard, native of Cripple Creek and Forestry Graduate of Colorado State College at Fort Collins. He arrived on the scene June, 1939 and was transferred to Dinosaur National Monument in May, 1944. During his five year stint of area pioneering under the most adverse circumstances he managed, literally, to "hold the fort" intact until better times could permit his successors to initiate meaningful restoration programs. Lombard's problem, shared by all NPS managers during this period, was World War II and the virtual freeze on funds for improvements or area staffing. While American forces were paying the grievous toll for victory in Europe and the South Pacific, the Fort Laramie buildings, ancient and forlorn relics of the Indian Wars, had somehow to be preserved a few more years before their desperate case could be attended to. During this precarious period Lombard had the benefit of the direct material assistance of the Coordinating Superintendent's office at Rocky Mountain National Park; the planning assistance of the Regional Office in Omaha; and research assistance by neighboring Scotts Bluff personnel. But the biggest single factor in his success was Lombard's own native ingenuity, drive and selfless dedication reflected in 60 to 70 hour work weeks despite a measly area budget of around $2,000. per annum, for starters, including the Custodian's salary.


Lombard's only lapse in conscientiousness, of record, was in connection with a field planning conference set up by Assistant Superintendent John McLaughlin, in November 1939, when the underpaid Custodian announced that the meeting conflicted with his planned autumnal elk hunt, a sacred prerogative of all red-blooded Wyoming male citizens. Since the country phone line to the Fort was out of whack, as usual, the heated issue was resolved by a flurry of telegrams, with the dates of both meeting and elk hunt delicately adjusted. Lombard's argument that he needed meat to feed his family, to supplement the meager diet enforced by his pitifully small salary, carried the day. Later he developed an irrigated "Victory Garden" in back of the Cavalry Barracks, with bumper crops of vegetables, but especially corn. This not only further relieved the alleged hunger pains (the elk hunt was a grand success) but word got around about the succulent Fort Laramie sweet corn and, after years of benign neglect, official travel to the Fort from Estes Park, Omaha and Washington, D.C. enjoyed a notable upswing. Actually, feeding "visiting firemen" on a gratuitous basis, in the absence of a cafe in the neighboring town of Fort Laramie, became standard procedure for Jess and his good-natured wife Ila.
Not only were there frequent pilgrimages to the Fort by the Coordinating Superintendent and members of his staff. The Region and the Washington Office began to demonstrate renewed interest. The Regional people looked upon Fort Laramie as a great planning challenge and, in addition, it was right on the road to the more glamorous Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Associate Director Hillory Tolson, whose visit to the site with Mattes in 1936 led directly to state and federal ownership, was the first high level Washington official to visit the new jewel in the Park Service crown, in 1941. Two years later it was visited by none other than Newton B. Drury, NPS Director vice Arno B. Cammerer, accompanied by Conrad L. Wirth, Chief of Lands, who himself would become Director in 1950.


During the War years the Fort Laramie staff consisted of a grand total of one Lombard except for a temporary clerk loaned by Rocky Mountain, and an occasional laborer or carpenter when a dribble of funds could be wheedled out of the Regional Office. It was a lonely vigil, but there were a few bright spots that bolstered "staff" morale and gave the neophyte area a good official profile. In February 1941 there was a formal regional Federal conference at Rocky Mountain National Park to which were invited the Custodians of the four satellite areas under Canfield's coordination Fort Laramie, Scotts Bluff, Dinosaur, and Devil's Tower. Also, the Rocky Mountain and Regional Offices held a series of planning conferences at the Fort to attempt to shape the future while stymied in the present. Best of all, funds and manpower were scrounged up to provide the first effective program of "emergency stabilization" of the old wrecks that once constituted the pride of the grand Army post, an achievement that was highlighted by formal and well-publicized ceremonies in 1940 recognizing the rescue and preliminary rehabilitation of the most famous of all Fort Laramie structures Old Bedlam.


Before anything could be done with the physical remains it was necessary for all offices to agree on some kind of standard identification for them so that managers and technicians could communicate intelligibly. Such identification was now possible inasmuch as historical research of old military records and ground-plans had progressed sufficiently to comprehend the original military character of most of the surviving structures, the dates of original construction, and the dates of major pre-1890 modifications. Now it was possible to give a proper working label to each of the 22 structures still standing, either intact or in ruins (the same number known to have survived as of 1915 at the beginning of "The Crusade"). Twelve of these were readily identifiable and could be labelled without ambiguity: Old Bedlam, the Old Guardhouse, the New Guardhouse, the Old Bakery, the New Bakery, Cavalry Barracks, Administration Building, Sawmill, NonCommissioned Officers Quarters, Hospital, Commissary Storehouse, and Old Army BridgeThe six Officers Quarters presented only a problem of labelling. Since none of the military occupants were known in 1939 Mattes devised an alphabetical system Officers Quarters A, B, C, D, E, and F going clockwise around the parade ground beginning with the handsome frame "Sandercock House" that sat on top of old Fort John. ("F" was known to be the post-1890 John Hunton residence.)


The Sutler's Store label was used from the start and then after research was retained despite the fact that in the last two decades of military occupation it was known rather as the "Post Traders." Although the biggest part of the surviving structure represented additions and alterations of 1883, it was the original 1849-1850 adobe store itself, built and occupied by the "Sutler", that gave this unique civilian-managed establishment its special glamor. The 1850 Magazine was at first obscured as a chicken-shed appendage to the fragmentary remains of a lime-concrete addition to an extinct adobe officers quarters, so it took more research to clarify
its origins. What was later identified by an old-timer as the Commanding Officer's Chicken House was in 1939 thought to be "The Colonel's Stable," presumably for his favorite horse, and it was some time before the architects came to the conclusion that the frame Privy behind Officers Quarters F was of authentic pre-1890 vintage.


With the historic structure identity problem more or less solved, it became necessary to give highest priority to "first aid" to these aging and decrepit relics. This was made possible by the revival of the ERA project at the Fort from late 1939 through June, 1942, on the scale of a 21-man crew and gross expenditures in the neighborhood of $40,000. This was under Lombard's direction except for architectural and engineering advice by Rocky Mountain and Regional Office staffs. Among accomplishments in this department were the stabilization of the creaky, toppling old Sutler's Store by the application of cables, turnbuckles, and shoring timbers; reinforcement of footings of the Administration Building ruins; re-roofing, and repairing chimneys of Officers Quarters A, E and F; putting Officers Quarters F in useable interior condition; and "defensive" repairs on the exteriors of all intact structures.


During this period an effective "construction proposal" form was devised, to ensure that all work undertaken had proper technical review and approval. At Canfield's suggestion, Mattes and Lombard attempted to standardize terminology for the various types and degrees of preservation work stabilization, repair, restoration, reconstruction, substitution, etc. Also, in accordance with approved restoration technology of the period, a method of using stamped metal markers was used to identify and date all new structural members, to differentiate from original workmanship. In addition, Lombard was prevailed upon to make a detailed written record of all maintenance, repair, or other work on all historic structures, to be kept in chronological sequence in a 5 x 8 card file. Meanwhile, by late 1940 the Regional Office had completed the set of measured drawings by Architects Hill and Wilkie of all structures, with photo albums, for future reference. [27]


Most of the available funds and manpower were expended on "Old Bedlam," the famous old bachelor officers quarters and onetime Commanding Officers headquarters, which had been received from the State in alarming condition gutted internally, its once-graceful verandas hanging in shreds, the main building block creaking and shuddering in every high wind. After shoring up the 90-year old veteran with timber bracing to prevent collapse, Hummel, Canfield and Lombard met in September, 1939 and agreed to give first priority to what they called "restoration" of Old Bedlam, but which consisted actually of some first class rehabilitation which would keep the structure in a respectable upright position until a genuine full-blown restoration could be achieved. The principal elements of the Canfield-Lombard treatment of Bedlam was as follows: jacking up the entire structure to level the walls and pour new footings; re-roofing, after the reduction of rotten brick chimneys; re-building of the double veranda with retention of still viable original members; and replacement of original weatherboards missing or curled out of shape.


On August 15, 1940 over 4,000 people assembled to attend ceremonies for which the rejuvenated porch of Old Bedlam served as speaking platform. The affair was for the primary purpose of recognizing what Coordinating Superintendent Canfield as Master of Ceremonies called "the first restoration project," which was also an appropriate moment to publicly dedicate the new National Monument. It so happened that 1940 was also the 50th anniversary of Wyoming's statehood, as well as the abandonment of the military post. Suitable recognition of these coincidental facts took the form of dedication of a bronze plaque to John
"Portugee" Phillips, described by guest speaker Robert S. Ellison of Tulsa (first chairman of the Historical Landmark Commission) as "the Paul Revere of the Plains" because of his heroic ride from Fort Phil Kearny to Fort Laramie to report the Fetterman Massacre of December, 1866. Since legend has it that Phillips' exhausted horse dropped dead on the parade ground, and that the haggard frozen Scout then burst upon a startled assemblage of officers and their ladies celebrating Christmas in Old Bedlam, the plaque was erected directly in front of that venerable structure. Other notables present on that auspicious occasion were George Houser, Guernsey editor, old Fort Laramie champion, and now Secretary of the State Department of Commerce and Industry; Howard R. Driggs, William H. Jackson, Mae Reed Porter and other notables of the Oregon Trail Memorial Association; and the then current HLCW trio, Warren Richardson, Joseph Weppner, and John Charles Thompson. Following the formalities, which included a lively brass band and a beef barbecue, a historical pageant, "Wyoming Speaks," was staged on the grounds by the Goshen and Platte Counties Golden Anniversary Committees.
There were other less glamorous accomplishments with ERA and reserve funds under Lombard's auspices, more in the nature of maintenance or temporary improvements." The final phase of area cleanup saw the removal of the last of the non-historic or post-1890 grounds debris and the restoration of native grasses, an accomplishment enhanced by abundant rainfall in the early 1940s following drought years. This promoted weed growth also, of course, primarily bindweed which was combatted by a poisoning project. Restoration of the Fort Laramie irrigation ditch facilitated watering of the greenery, including saplings planted around the parade ground in a well-intentioned but dubious effort to restore the trees evident in 1880s photographs. A late-period "race-track" on the plateau north of the Non-Commissioned Officers Quarters was obliterated. Among other unheralded achievements were the completion of boundary fencing, installation of boundary markers, and a few directional and interpretive signs.


More significant was the construction of a temporary equipment shed, a "temporary" parking area, and "temporary" pit toilets adjacent to the Cavalry Barracks, all "temporary" facilities that were destined to expand and dominate the scene for the next 40 years, or until the date of this writing (1978). All of these were in the immediate vicinity of the Barracks, the parade ground end of which now became a combination Custodian's office and living quarters. Despite all efforts to make these quarters liveable for the next 25 years, the character of the superannuated structure was such that adequate heating was a perennial problem, a fact stressed on one sub-zero occasion when a hot-water bottle which fell from bed to floor was discovered to be frozen solid in the morning. After skunks, mice, and other creatures beneath the floor were eradicated, unsavory odors wafted down from the ceiling pigeon droppings and bat guano in quantities on the unused second floor which left olfactory impressions long after the stuff was shoveled up and trucked awayA minor triumph of the Lombard period in the historic preservation department was the refurbishing for appearances only of an authentic pit privy or out-house behind Officers Quarters F, the smallest of the military structures surviving more or less intact. Being an interesting fixture of the 1880s, a prime conversation piece, it was with some validity that Lombard referred proudly to this as a "Victorian bathroom" or "Gay Nineties Latrine." Since visitors also required "working latrines," Lombard had two functional privies of similar antique design built behind the ruins of Officers Quarters B, C and D (which are still in place, as of 1978, but no longer functionalA major concern in the historic preservation area, not resolved in the Lombard era and never since resolvedto universal satisfaction, was the treatment of historic standing ruins, consisting mainly of the stark walls of grout or lime-concrete Army structures erected 1873-1886, denuded of lumber after 1890 by parties who paid private owners John Hunton and Joe Wilde for the salvage. These are identified as the Administration Building, Officers Quarters B, C, and D, the Sawmill, the Hospital, the Non-Com Quarters, the New Bakery, and the New Guardhouse. While these have the appearance of solidity, the grout deteriorates from weathering, principally alternate freezing and thawing of moisture, and the ruins are particularly vulnerable at foundation plate levels and apertures. In time holes and cracks appear, eventually causing the walls to crumble, tilt and if nothing is done collapse, as happened since 1937 to portions of the Hospital. From the beginning of NPS involvement, even though other intact structures received preference, thought was given to ways and means of "ruins stabilization." During the War there was a series of unhelpful technical reports by Charles Randels, Wilfred Hill and others on the problem of doing something about footings, cappings, and wall surface preservation. The problem was challenging enough to give rise in June 1941 to a conference at the Fort attended by Omaha and Washington, D.C. engineers, fortified by the latest data on masonry preservation techniques. From this, definitive solutions were supposed to emerge but the intractable nature of the ponderous grout walls, coupled with the rather helpless infancy of masonry preservation science, resulted in no bona fide solutions at that time. For the next three decades different managers and technicians would try different solutions, experimentally, with questionable long-term results. In a trip report of August 1940 Regional Historian Hummel cautioned against "make work" with ERA crews that might unthinkingly damage historical evidence, and stressed the need for more historical and archeological research on Fort Laramie structures their chronology, original plans, and uses before valid preservation proposals could be formulated. Pursuant to his concern and that of Acting Coordinating Superintendent Doerr, in October 1941 Custodian Mattes of Scotts Bluff received a handsome promotion (from $2,000 p.a. to $2,600 p.a.) for performing extra duty as official research historian or "historical technician" for Fort Laramie. He was to research and prepare technical reports beyond those prior accomplishments when he was only on a volunteer or special assignment basis.


Mattes was able to contribute significantly in several ways, despite his residency at Scotts Bluff, partly because he had a permanent ranger and clerk, plus ample maintenance funds, to back him up at that area during his absences, partly because of his technical skills, and partly because of an enthusiasm for Fort Laramie dating back to 1935 when he first visited that area and became one of its vocal advocates. Among his more significant accomplishments during the Lombard period was the completion of an encyclopedic compendium of archival and library source references entitled "Surviving Army Structures at Fort Laramie," which became a basic guide for future architects, planners and interpreters. Another major contribution was a report entitled, "Research Checklist of Contemporary Plans and Pictures," which over the decades has been frequently updated as new pictorial records have been discovered. Fort Laramie buildings, scenes, and personalities seems to have been surprisingly well recorded by artists and photographers over the years, and as their graphic evidence began to accumulate as a valuable source of primary evidence, the collection and cataloguing of such items became imperative.


In addition to these basic studies by Mattes, Custodian Lombard conducted interviews with old-timers who had personal ties with the pre-1890 Fort. Some of these people had remained as Wyoming residents. Others were outstate visitors who "returned to the scene of the crime," upon hearing of its new park status, and made themselves known. Prominent in the former group was Alice Fields Sampson, daughter of the Fields who was appointed as Interior Department Custodian in 1890. Two valuable informants were Meade
Sandercock and his sister Mamie Robertson whose childhood recollections of the Sutler's Store provided the first clear record of the precise 1880s uses of the various sections of that building. Among venerable visitors from outstate were General G. W. McIver (ret.), who had been involved in the dismantling of the Fort in 1890, and Jack S. Collins, nephew of James S. and Gilbert Collins who held the post tradership in the 1870s. There were other research windfalls, such as the Custodian's discovery of a large batch of papers and ledgers in a hidden cranny of the Sutler's Store belonging to Post Trader John London of the 1880s. Another example was a bit of tantalizing research on the Hog Ranch Saloon when that one-time hangout for enlisted men, just west of the Military Reservation, was levelled by private owners unsympathetic to the cause of historic preservation.


Mattes made frequent visits to the Fort to consult with Lombard on project planning and execution. He assisted in the preparation of interpretive tour maps and historical resumes used in both area Master Plans and information leaflets for visitors. He also conjured up the first "Preliminary Museum Plan" for the area. Since no permanent museum or Visitor Center materialized during the first 40 years of the park's existence, no use has been made of this or any other of the several versions of a Fort museum plan. Instead, each Superintendent beginning with Lombard improvised his own "temporary museum," using artifacts, illustrations and improvised labels, to give visitors insight into Fort Laramie history and sociology. Lombard's "museum" was the front two rooms of Officers Quarters E, plus a rough "laboratory" and storage place in the rear. This latter was the beginning of an effort to formalize, catalog, and accession historical objects or "relics" that had accumulated by donation or "surface archeology" under Mattes, Fraser and Lombard, and the artifacts unearthed by the initial archeological programs.


G. Hubert Smith, who had worked with Mattes in the initial 1938 clean-up operation, was on hand also for three summers thereafter to direct CCC crews in solving archeological puzzles. In 1939 he excavated the two vanished Officers Quarters sites between Old Bedlam and Officers Quarters E, in the process discovering that a standing stone remnant of one of the sites was in fact the walls of the original Post Magazine of 1850. That same summer he also excavated the foundations of the extinct Infantry Barracks and kitchens at the north end of the parade ground. The cleaning, labelling, boxing and storage of over 60 cartons of artifacts then accumulated, under Smith's direction, entitles him to recognition as the area's first professional, though temporary, museum curator. His manuscript write-ups on these "digs", though never published, also constitute the first scientific reports on Fort Laramie archeology. In 1940-1941 help on the artifact collection was made available through the National Youth Administration (NYA) under the direction of Jerome Hendron, another CCC veteran. Smith and Hendron next excavated the levelled kitchen area of Officers Quarters D, and then tackled the cellar of the adobe wing of the Sutler's Store, which had always been the main retail store, coming up with an impressive collection of artifacts that earlier amateur diggers had missed, primarily coins dating back to 1835. The original floor was missing, but Hendron was able to plot the existence of a storage area and sub-floor. Hendron's enduring contribution was a report entitled, "Introduction to the Archeology of Fort Laramie," which surveyed all work up to that point. (Hendron later moved to Arizona. After a stint with the Minnesota Historical Society, Smith became a historical archeologist with the Missouri River Basin Surveys of the Smithsonian Institution at Lincoln, Nebraska.)
Before Lombard's departure for Utah, the temporary museum was moved to the office lobby in the Cavalry
Barracks, while the cartons and catalog which constituted the museum laboratory were installed in another section of that building. Other steps taken for the benefit of visitors included the installation of informational signs and markers at the building sites, the free distribution of an information bulletin or area guide, the first official printed publication for the area. Also published during this period, in Annals of Wyoming, official quarterly of the Wyoming Historical Department, was Mattes' documented research report on "The Sutler's Store at Fort Laramie" and Lombard's sentimental essay on "Old BedlamThough there was still not much to see beside the drab exteriors of the old buildings, a portent of things to come was the upsurge of visitors, from 4,000 in 1937 to over 10,000 in 1940, the year Old Bedlam was given cosmetic treatment and made the focus of dedication ceremonies. (Considering war-time exigencies, such as gas rationing, it is not surprising that attendance slipped below 2,500 annually from 1942 through 1944.) Another statistic was an operating budget of over $6,000. for Fiscal Year 1944, an inflationary threefold increase over the $1,950. for starters in Fiscal Year 1939. Much of the increase went for equipment and maintenance. Despite an administrative increase in the Custodian's salary (from $1,920 to $2,100 p.a.) the Fort Laramie custodianship was still no sinecure. Although physical improvements were severely limited by war-time budgets, there was no ceiling on long-range Master Planning of Fort Laramie's future by concerned officials at all levels. Anticipating expansive post-war budgets, there was some heavy concentration during this period on the subject, which is worth surveying briefly as a record of the cerebral energy expended, and an example of the planning process for a new Park Service area. (The process, which consists basically of exploring all alternatives along with the accumulation of maximum data, seems not to have changed radically between 1939 and 1978.) Details of which conference was held where and by whom may be omitted except to note that the principals involved in this maiden planning effort, besides Canfield and Lombard, were Howard Baker, Associate Regional Director, and Edward A. Hummel, Regional Historian, of the Regional Office, and Merrill Mattes of Scotts Bluff.


The first Fort Laramie Master Plan, dated June 1939, predicated a future headquarters area on the bottoms west of the parade ground area. It was promptly criticized as being too close to the historic buildings and subject to flooding. Accordingly, a second plan attempted to site a headquarters development in the Southeast corner of the area, on the far or South side of the Laramie River, and west of Deer Creek. This would require a new access road from the west and, of course, a new bridge across the Laramie, but all within the given Monument boundary. While well screened from the parade ground by river bottom trees and undergrowth, this was a kind of dismal swamp which bode ill for employee's health, was also subject to flooding, and it offered little control of public access to the Fort proper. Despite their flaws, both these initial plans had the merit of managing to remain within the given arbitrary and rather cramped boundaries of the 214 acre Monument.


A third version, proposed by Canfield in 1940, would put the headquarters, utilities and residential areas in the same general Southeast corner, but this time on the right bank of Deer Creek, above flood level and with sight control of the Fort. The catch here was that road access to the park might require an extension of the south and east boundaries to provide right-of-way along the south side of the Laramie, and adequate elbow room for new buildings properly screened at a discreet distance from the historic area. Canfield's idea was that the separate old and new building groups would be connected by a foot-bridge, extending from a low-profile Visitor Center to the west bank, at a point somewhere between Officers Quarters A and the Administration Building ruins, that is, the vicinity of the original adobe-walled Fort John, which would make an admirable interpretive point of departure. This bold concept, coupled with awareness now that almost half of the 1880s Fort complex had been omitted from the State purchase, led to a growing conviction that it would be necessary to seek additional land through Congressional enactment. So almost from the very beginnings of the National Monument we find increasing reference in reports and correspondence to the need for extension of boundaries, and this is reflected similarly in periodic Master Plan revisions.


Neither Canfield nor any one else would have been able to guess in 1940 that over 25 years would elapse before the exact acreage required would be agreed upon, legislation enacted, and the lands purchased. Neither could he have imagined that after the lapse of 38 years there would still be no new museum-headquarters complex at the site he envisioned, or any where else that, in fact, the Fort offices and Visitor Center would still be "temporarily" in one of the historic buildings.
                      

[GOSHEN COUNTY  WY.] [WY. Forts] [Fort Laramie] [Supt. History] [Pony Express] [Red Cloud Ft.L.] [1870 Census] [Census1930] [Tour]

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