One of the wonderful things about Wyoming is the vast
openness of the state. Sometimes if you
squint your eyes and look away from the highway you are on, fences disappear, cattle
turn into buffalo and you can almost picture yourself back in a time before the
white settlers came to the area. In
areas you can feel the beginning of the settling of the frontier as if you were
there. One time sitting on the porch of
“Old Bedlam”, one of the many buildings at Fort Laramie Historic Site, I could
see the cavalry mounted on their horses on the parade ground I was looking
at. Two women and a child in bustled
dresses walked up the path to the old building.
Later I learned of a woman who had a small boy who died at Fort Laramie
while his father was out fighting the Indian Wars. I have often wondered if it was this woman,
her sickly son and the commanders wife of the post that I had seen that day in
a ghostly apparition.
Fort Laramie sits at the confluence of the Laramie and North
Platte Rivers. It is a very peaceful
place. Sometimes I would go to the area
behind the original site and sit by the Laramie River and meditate under two
huge cottonwood trees. I would have liked
to have asked those old trees about the things they had seen over their
lifetimes. The fort came into being as a fur trader’s fort in the in 1834
established by Robert Campbell and William Sublette and was named Fort
William. It was a very small fort, only
about 100x80 feet. Its stockade was made
of 15 ft high hewn cottonwood logs. As
the beaver traded at the fort were trapped to near extinction, the two founders
realized that their money was to be made in the buffalo trade with the Indians
of the area. Their monopoly on the trade lasted until Fort Platte was built
about a mile away in 1841. (A marker stands at the sight on the road to Fort
Laramie) At that time Sublette and Campbell refurbished their fort and made it
larger and more substantial with adobe walls.
They renamed it Fort John. Tons of buffalo hides were brought to the
fort and in the fall sent east to the coast and beyond. [1]
As the buffalo trade declined Fort John took on a new
role. In 1841 the first westward-bound
emigrants arrived at Fort John. Tens of thousands would follow on their way to
Oregon, California and Utah’s Salt Lake Valley.
In 1849 the US Army purchased Fort John, making it one of the posts
established by the military to protect emigrants on the Oregon and Mormon
trails. [2]
The fort grew quickly to serve a garrison of soldiers. They constructed stables, officers housing, soldiers’
quarters, a bakery, guardhouse and a powder magazine. All these structures are still at Fort
Laramie today in various stages of repair and disrepair. During the summer the
Park Service and the Fort Laramie Historical Society have people in authentic dress
doing the everyday things that went on at the fort. [3]
Fort Laramie as it
was renamed after Jacques La Ramee and became the principal military
outpost on the Northern Great Plains. It
also became the center of transportation and communication in the central
Rockies. Through it passed emigrant
trails, stage lines, the Pony Express and the transcontinental telegraph.[4]
Fort Laramie is probably remembered for two treaties with
the Northern Plains Indian Nations that were negotiated there. The first was the Horse Creek Treaty of 1851 which
was actually signed further east just past the Wyoming border in Nebraska on a
flat spot where Horse Creek enters the North Platte River. It was signed there rather than at the fort
because the number of Indians that appeared at the signing were so numerous it
had to be moved to a larger area to accommodate the people. [5]
The second was a highly disputed treated of 1868. This
treaty among other things was supposed to keep white settlers out of the Black
Hills of South Dakota at the northeastern boundary of Wyoming. Fort Laramie was charged with the enforcement
of the treaty. At first they did, but as
more and more miners and settlers moved into the area it became impossible for
them to do it. Disputes arose. Settlers, miners and military died as well as
Indians. Policy changed toward the
Indians and the 1868 treaty like so many others was never enforced. [6]
Fort Laramie became less important to the area as the Indian
Wars came to an end and the Indian peoples were moved onto reservations.[7] The building of the Transcontinental Railroad
made wagon travel and the need for the fort less important. The last soldiers
left the post on April 20, 1890[8]
and sold at auction.[9]
The area was opened up to settlers on
October 5, 1891.[10] For 48 years it languished and fell into
disrepair. In 1938 it became part of the National Park System and was
refurbished.
Along with the fort a town grew up to the north across the
North Platte River. The small town still
stands there today. Their welcome sign
says it all
Just after you cross the tracks to go to the Fort you will
see a building decorated with American flags and buntings. It sits in front of an RV park. This is the Fort Laramie American Grill or
FLAG. It is a small restaurant and it is
good to call ahead to make reservations (you can do so on line) or if you don’t
mind sharing a table with someone you don’t know you can take your chance at
the busy hours. FLAG is one of the best
restaurants I have eaten at. A husband
and wife from Boston
wikapedia free image[11]
moved west and started this business. Make sure to stop by and have a Bison Burger
or one of their other great menu items.
Say Lee Ann sent you and tell Paul “hi” for us. http://www.flagcafe.com/
Guernsey State Park mentioned earlier in the blog is just west
of Fort Laramie. To the East is Torrington WY and just about 45 minutes further
is Scottsbluff, NE. All of these towns
have historical significance to the Oregon Trail. Further South you can visit
Wheatland and Cheyenne.
I miss my visits to Fort Laramie on cool summer mornings or
brisk autumn days. I miss the mysterious
peace I found sitting under those lovely cottonwoods by the river and the
ghosts of the past that entertained me from the porch of Old Bedlam.
No comments:
Post a Comment