Synopses & Reviews
Of all the U.S. Army posts in the West, none witnessed more history than Fort Laramie, positioned where the northern Great Plains join the Rocky Mountains. From its beginnings as a trading post in 1834 to its abandonment by the army in 1890, it was involved in the buffalo hide trade, overland migrations, Indian wars and treaties, the Utah War, Confederate maneuvering, and the coming of the telegraph and first transcontinental railroad.
Douglas C. McChristian has written the first complete history of Fort Laramie, chronicling every critical stage in its existence, including its addition to the National Park System. He draws on an extraordinary array of archival materialsandndash;including those at Fort Laramie National Historic Siteandndash;to present new data about the fort and new interpretations of historical events.
Emphasizing the fort's military history, McChristian documents the army's vital role in ending challenges posed by American Indians to U.S. occupation and settlement of the region, and he expands on the fort's interactions with the many Native peoples of the Central Plains and Rocky Mountains. He provides a particularly lucid description of the infamous Grattan fight of 1854, which initiated a generation of strife between Indians and U.S. soldiers, and he recounts the 1851 Horse Creek and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties.
Meticulously researched and gracefully told, this is a long-overdue military history of one of the American West's most venerable historic places.
Synopsis
The last word on this quintessential frontier army post
Synopsis
Of all the U.S. Army posts in the West, none witnessed more history than Fort Laramie, positioned where the northern Great Plains join the Rocky Mountains. From its beginnings as a trading post in 1834 to its abandonment by the army in 1890, it was involved in the buffalo hide trade, overland migrations, Indian wars and treaties, the Utah War, Confederate maneuvering, and the coming of the telegraph and first transcontinental railroad. Meticulously researched and gracefully told, this is a long-overdue military history of one of the American West's most venerable historic places.
About the Author
Douglas C. McChristian is a retired research historian for the National Park Service in the Santa Fe regional office and a former National Park Service field historian at Fort Davis and Fort Laramie National Historic Sites and at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. A resident of Tucson, Arizona, he is the author of Fort Bowie, Arizona:Combat Post of the Southwest, 1858andndash;1894.
Paul L. Hedren is a retired National Park Service superintendent residing in Omaha, Nebraska. He is the author of Fort Laramie and the Great Sioux War and, most recently, We Trailed the Sioux: Enlisted Men Speak on Custer, Crook, and the Great Sioux War.