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The
first Fort Kearny was built in 1847 at Nebraska City, consisting of one
lone log blockhouse sitting atop a hill over the Missouri River. Soldiers
returning from the Mexican War wintered there. However, just a year later,
the military decided that the site was ill-chosen and a new fort was built
some two hundred miles west on the south bank of the Platte River and
about halfway between
Forts
Leavenworth,
Kansas
and
Fort Laramie,
Wyoming. This
new fort was first called Fort Childs, but then took the name of the
original fort in Nebraska City. The new post, established along the
Oregon-California Trail route, was soon protecting thousands of westward
bound pioneers who camped in the wide Platte Valley around the fort.
Reports estimate that on some days over five hundred ox teams passed the
fort. The post also served as an ammunition depot and protected peaceable
Indians
in the area from hostiles and outlaws.
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Fort Kearny by William Henry Jackson, courtesy
Scotts Bluff National Monument |
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"Fort Kearny, like most of the forts in the West, has no fortifications
but is merely a station for troops. It stands on a slight elevation a
few miles from the Platte River. The fort consists of five unpainted
wooden houses, two dozen long, low mud [sod or adobe] buildings. The
houses are built around a large open square or parade ground, while the
mud buildings extend in any and every direction out from the roads that
run along the sides of this square. Trees have been set out along the
borders of the parade ground, and they are the only bushes that can be
seen in any direction except a few straggling ones on the banks of the
Platte a few miles distant. Intermixed between these immature trees on the
sides of the square are sixteen blockhouse guns, two field pieces, two
mountain howitzers and one prairie piece. These constitute the artillery
defenses of the post against the
Indians.
On
the west side of the parade ground stands the house of the commanding
officer. It is a large, ill-shaped, unpainted structure, two stories
high, with piazzas along its entire front on both floors. Within,
however, the building is much more respectable being commodious,
comfortable, well finished and neatly finished. Directly opposite the
commanding officer's house, on the other side of the square, is the
soldier's barracks, seventy feet by thirty feet, and two stories high. The
barracks has never been finished and now is in bad order. It can
accommodate very well eighty-four men. There are in it now between ninety
and one hundred men. The other wooden buildings are the officers'
quarters, the hospital and the sutler's store. These structures do not
present a very inviting appearance to the eye, but they are charming
places compared to the spectacle of twenty-four long, winding,
broken-backed, falling down mud buildings. These are of all sizes, the
largest one being about one hundred forty feet long, forty feet wide and
twelve feet high."
Just west of Fort Kearny a small settlement
called Dobytown was established around 1859. Like many other early
settlements, it was a wild and rough frontier town that was called home to
a number of lawless elements. Gambling, liquor and disreputable men and
women were its principal attractions, though it also served as an
outfitting point west of the Missouri River. One of the town's most famous
visitors,
General William Tecumseh Sherman described the horrible whiskey he was
served here as "tanglefoot." Despite its bad reputation, the town served
as a transportation hub from 1860 to 1866 and was the first county seat of
Kearney County.
During these years, hostilities among the
Plains tribes, particularly the
Cheyenne and
Sioux, gradually
mounted and become more wide-spread until it became an all out war in
1864. Violence erupted all along the Platte and Little Blue Rivers in
Nebraska as
wagon trains were attacked, members of the trains killed and scalped, and
the wagons plundered and burned. During this time Fort Kearny became one
of the central points for the army and the home of the First
Nebraska
Cavalry and the Seventh Iowa Cavalry. During these dangerous times,
westward bound wagon trains were not allowed to proceed until there were
fifty wagons or more and soldier guards were sent along with the wagon
trains and stagecoaches. Earthwork fortifications were built at the fort
in anticipation of an attempted attack on the post.
The completion of the Union Pacific
Railroad in 1869 reduced the flow of wagons on the
Oregon-California Trail, spelling a death knell for Dobytown and on May
17, 1871, the last soldiers departed from Fort Kearny.
For 23 years, it served as a military post,
symbolizing westward expansion and development. After it was abandoned the
buildings were torn down and the land opened for homesteading. The
earthworks of the fortifications and the large cottonwoods around the
parade grounds were all that remained. In 1929 the State of
Nebraska
acquired title to the land and designated it a state park in 1960.
Archeological exploration has located the
building sites that are now marked with interpetive signs.
Replicas of the palisade and
blacksmith-carpenter shop were built. An interpretive center presents
audio-visual programs and museum displays. Fort Kearny State Historical
Park, including 40 acres, also acts as a recreational area, providing
hiking trails, camping, picnicking and boating.
Fort Kearny State Historical Park is about
seven miles southeast of Kearney,
Nebraska.
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