Fort Laramie: Gateway to the Far West

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Bound for a fur trapper rendezvous in 1830, William L. Sublette hauled a wagon loaded with supplies over a grassy piece of ground at the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers in what would become Wyoming. Sublette noted that the location, between the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, was favorable for a trading post that could provide goods for Indians and trappers. Four years later, he returned with partner Robert Campbell to build a stockaded ‘fort’ with 15-foot hand-hewed cottonwood logs forming the palisade.

On May 31, 1834, William Marshall Anderson wrote in his journal: ‘This day we laid the foundation log of a fort on Laramie’s Fork. A friendly dispute arose between our leader and myself, as to the name. He proposed to call it Fort Anderson. I insisted upon baptising it Fort Sublette, and holding the trump card in my hand, a bottle of champagne, was about to claim the trick…when [William] Patton offered a compromise which was accepted, and the foam flew, in honor of — Fort William, which contained the triad prenames of clerk, leader and friend.’

A year later, the partners sold Fort William to veteran mountain man Jim Bridger and his associates. They, in turn, sold out the following year to the American Fur Company — the same year Elizabeth Spaulding and Narcissa Whitman, the first white women on the Oregon Trail, stopped in at the fort.

By 1841, the log palisade had deteriorated to the point that the company built a new fort out of adobe, using a 2,000-year-old Roman recipe for lime concrete. Workers took limestone from the nearby bluffs, broke it up and cooked the lime out in hot kilns. They next mixed in sand, gravel and water, creating a simple but effective concrete. The company called this new post Fort John-on-the-Laramie after the company’s senior partner, John B. Sarpy. At some point a clerk shortened it to Fort Laramie and the nickname stuck.

From its inception, the fort acted as a contact point between whites and the native population of the region. This history prompted Lieutenant John C. ‘the Pathfinder’ Frémont to suggest, on his first exploratory trip through the Rocky Mountains in 1842, that Fort Laramie would make a good military post for protecting pioneers headed overland for the Far West. However, it took Congress three years to authorize the establishment of military posts along the Oregon Trail. Meanwhile, about 50,000 emigrants had already passed through Fort Laramie on their way to what they hoped would be the ‘land of milk and honey.’

Congress finally allotted $4,000 for the purchase of Fort Laramie in 1849, a move that coincided with the gold rush to California. Two companies of mounted riflemen and one company of the 6th Infantry comprised the fort’s first garrison. Military architect 1st Lt. Daniel P.

Woodbury designed a two-story post headquarters the year the Army took over, and today the 150-year-old structure is believed to be the oldest building still standing in Wyoming. Over the years, the building served as officers quarters, post commander’s residence and bachelor-officers quarters. Due to the boisterous nature of the bachelors (and their drinking parties), soldiers began referring to the quarters as Old Bedlam after the famous English sanitarium for the insane, Bedlam Asylum.

Next, Woodbury, with the help of a second engineer officer, 2nd Lt. Andrew J. Donelson, devised an overall plan for the post. The plan called for ‘a fence 9 feet high or a rubble wall of the same height laid in mortar.’ The traditional-looking fort Woodbury envisioned, however, was never to be. For one thing, the cost — an estimated $60,000 — was too high. Also, the military took the fort construction duty out of the hands of the Corps of Engineers and gave it to the Quartermaster Department, creating a breakdown between planning and execution.

Fort Laramie only partially came to resemble a true fort (i.e., one surrounded by walls). Nevertheless, with men stationed at Fort Laramie such as those of Company K, 2nd U.S. Cavalry (considered among the best cavalry regiments in the Army during the summer of 1876), no one could dispute Fort Laramie’s importance as a military outpost. Up to 350 men were stationed at the fort at any given time. From dawn to tattoo at 8 p.m., their ‘fatigue duties’ included the usual morning and afternoon drills, policing the grounds, cleaning the barracks, tending the horses and standing guard. In the 1870s, bugler William D. Drown described the daily routine of a soldier’s life at Fort Laramie: ‘I commenced the day this morning by being orderly bugler for the commanding officer, and at half past eight in the morning, attended guard mounting — and immediately after, saddled up and rode two miles and assisted in digging a grave. Returned at half past twelve — started again at one with the funeral procession, after which was marched home, dressed myself for evening parade, marched back again to the corral, assisted in flogging a deserter, came home, ate supper, and hear [sic] I am scratching it down in the old journal. Some people think a soldier’s life is a lazy one, but soldiers themselves think otherwise.’

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