Fort Laramie National Historic Site The Wagner Perspective
The first fort in Wyoming was started as a fur trade post in 1834, known as Fort John. Located near the Laramie River, it had become Fort Laramie by 1849 when the military took control. The fort’s grounds just west of the town of Fort Laramie in southeast Wyoming have an open parade ground surrounded by military-era buildings. One structure, Old Bedlam, is the oldest standing building in the State of Wyoming. At or near Fort Laramie, fur traders, overland emigrants, the frontier army and Indians gathered as they came to trade, work and meet.
Although Fort Laramie (1834-1890), a National Historic Site, is undoubtedly the most important and outstanding example of its kind in Wyoming, there are other forts for you to explore. Several of them have periodic living history programs and other special events.
Head southwest on Highway 85 to Cheyenne, site of Fort Warren, established in 1867 during construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. This fort is now F. E. Warren Air Force Base, the only active military base in the state.
To visit the other frontier era forts, travel northwest on U.S. 26 and then Interstate 25 to Douglas. Take Highway 93 west nine miles to Fort Fetterman (1867-1882), named for Lt. William J. Fetterman, who was killed in a battle with Lakota Indians the previous year. This state historic site has some original structures.
Fort Caspar (1858-1865), located in the Casper area on I-25, is rebuilt on the original site adjacent to the North Platte River. It has a new visitor’s center and interprets both frontier army and overland trail emigration. From Casper follow I-25
Fort Phil Kearny Buffalo CVB
and then I-90 north to Fort Phil Kearny, located a dozen miles north of Buffalo. Also a state historic site, this was a hotly contested fort during its two-year lifespan from 1866-1868. You can see the depressions in the ground that represent locations for fort structures, including a hospital, headquarters office, barracks, saddler’s shop, cavalry stable, guardhouse and powder magazine.
Begun as a trading post to serve overland travelers, Fort Bridger, located in southwest Wyoming, 35 miles east of Evanston off Interstate 80, was first in use by 1842. Owned and operated by mountain men Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez, it became a military post in 1857 and remained active until 1890. Now a state historic site, the fort has many military-era buildings, plus a reconstruction of Bridger’s original trading post.
Original red brick buildings that once comprised Fort Yellowstone now serve as headquarters for Yellowstone National Park at Mammoth. A walking trail guidebook provides information about the buildings.
Eastern Shoshone Indians still utilize some of the buildings at Fort Washakie (1871-1909), in central Wyoming north of Lander, established following the 1868 treaty with the Shoshones that placed them on a reservation in the Wind River Basin.
Most other Wyoming forts have long since disappeared back into the landscape. Fort Bonneville (also called Fort Nonsense), located near Daniel, was a fur trade fort in use from 1832-1839. Fort Reno on the Bozeman Road in the Powder River country had an even shorter life-span (1866-1868).
Fort Fred Steele (1868-1886), located off Interstate 80 east of Rawlins, has some standing ruins. It, like Fort H.W. Halleck (1862-1866; now on private ranch land near Elk Mountain) and Fort Sanders (1866-1882; at the southern edge of Laramie), was established by the military to protect workers as they built the Union Pacific Railroad.
You can shop where the Queen of England did, see artwork in a ranch setting that was home to British nobility, and ride horses in Wyoming Bighorn mountains just like the first cattlemen or early dudes if you take a cowboy vacation to the Bighorns.
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