Fort Laramie National Monument -- Fort Laramie National Historic Site, WY - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

The waymark coordinates are located at the entrance to the Fort Laramie National Historic Site.

The three great emigrant trails of the 1850s-60s all passed through Fort Laramie WY, as did the Pony Express and several stagecoach routes.

Fort Laramie was not only an important link in the chain of frontier forts, it was also a protector and stopping place for each of the three great emigrant trails of the Manifest Destiny era, the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, and the Mormon Trail. Fort Laramie was a major station on the Pony Express Trail, the Deadwood Stage, the Cheyenne Stage, and the Bozeman Trail.

It is therefore no wonder that the WPA writers spent four pages describing the fort and its history in the Guide to the State of Wyoming:

"Near a 14-ft. concrete Oregon Trail marker, at 3.1 m., is the entrance to FORT LARAMIE NATIONAL MONUMENT. Fort Laramie lies on the level tract with a large bend of the Laramie River, which flows by on the south and east, forming a deep the at this point. The river is named for a French-Canadian trapper, Jacques La Ramee, killed by Indians around 1820. Along the pebbled streambanks are clumps of trees and bushes, and beyond rise bare and dun -colored hills. More than a dozen buildings are set around the spacious parade ground; some are well-preserved; others are somewhat decayed, with badly cracked plaster and boarded up windows. Most are built of local materials: lumber, stone, adobe, and grout (mortar), for which the limestone was quarried and prepared [page 298] by the troops themselves. One or two buildings, adorned with porches and dormer windows, resemble ordinary gabled cottages; the majority are little more than sheds, the simple slant roofs and bare walls. 4 strand barbed wire fences around the site; slatted wooden gate sagged between heavy gate posts, braced with two by-four scantlings against the pull of the wire.

Robert Campbell and William L. Sublett founded a trading post at this point in 1834 and called it Fort William. In 1835 they sold out to a syndicate of trappers, who shortly afterwards sold it to the American Fur Company. A post called Fort Platt is believed to have been built by rival trappers in 1841, about a mile and a half from Fort William and near the confluence of the Laramie and Platte rivers. The owners of Fort William then enlarged the original fort and furnished it with Bastian’s, blockhouses, and loopholes. The rebuilt structure was named Fort John for John B. Sarpy, an officer of the company.

For time, the names Fort William and Fort John were used interchangeably for the post; then, it is said, a shipping clerk by mistake marked a box ‘Fort Laramie’ instead of ‘Fort John on the Laramie.’ Robert Campbell, who owned a supply house in St. Louis, thought the new name a good one and adopted it immediately.

When the government, on Fremont’s recommendation, bought and garrisoned Fort Laramie in 1849, it was already known as a major stopping place on the Great Western trails and as a center of a mountain plains region, hundreds of miles in extent.

In the early years, bison roamed so near the fort in herds so large that, according to one tale, an officer one day fired a 6-pounder among them and killed 30 at one shot.

Both before and during the migration, the fort was a rendezvous of Indians. Squaws lazed in the shade of its walls, while their almost naked children galloped about, shooting blackbirds with arrows. The slope in back of the fort quite commonly swarmed with Ogallala, whose horses and dogs wandered at will. Sometimes more than 100 lodges were outlined along the hillside. Often the young men came into the fort with their families and danced, chanted, and beat their skin drums. Green, vermilion, gray, or blue paints, wolfskins, and scarlet feathers added barbaric color to the scene. Some squaws were dresses of white antelope skin, heavily beaded; others wore buffalo robes or blankets.

When the Indians, and their last stand against white invasion, pillaged emigrant trains, drove off stock, and killed ranchmen, the occupants of Fort Laramie were constantly alert for attack. Although 1862-5 for the worst years on the plains as a whole, the period of greatest danger here was 1867-77, when men were pushing into the forbidden Sioux country (see Tours 1 and 3). Among the important treaty signed at, or near, the fort was the Treaty of 1851, which was regarded as the cause of hostilities that terrorize the northern plains for a score of years. A peace commission, created by Congress [page 299] in 1867, negotiated a year later the Sioux treaty, by which country north of the North Platte River and east of the summit of the Big Horn Range was held to be Indian territory.

Soldiers were stationed at Fort Laramie until 1890, when the government sold it. The state later obtained title to the property and, in 1938, transferred it to the National Park Service.

Among the stories associated with Fort Laramie is that of Ah-ho-appa, or Falling Leaf, daughter of Spotted Tail. Ah-ho-appa, quiet and aloof, often sat on the bench by the sutler’s store, watching the activities around her. Major Wood, post commander, saw to it that the officer the day wore a red silk sash and plumed hat, when she was watching the parade ground. Ah-ho-appa particularly liked guard mount; it was said she was in love with a white soldier. Hoping to make her forget the soldier, Spotted Tail moved his tribe to the Powder River. There, Ah-ho-appa died of tuberculosis in the autumn of 1866. Her body was brought to Fort Laramie, as she had requested, and given platform burial according to tribal custom, but with military honors. Some years later Spotted Tail removed it to the cemetery at the Rosebud agency in South Dakota.

In the early days, the Sioux maintained a tree burial ground beyond the Laramie River east of the fort. The papoose tree, a big box elder, having spread of 75 feet, contained at least 40 bodies of children, wrapped in Buffalo skins and lashed to the branches. As the thongs rotted, the bundles fell to the ground, and buzzards and coyotes tore them open. Bones and trinkets were scattered widely under the tree."

Book: Wyoming Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 296-299 Year Originally Published: 1941

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