A miner’s cabin hides among the turning aspens at Miner’s Delight, a tiny community that likely never reached a population of one hundred citizens.
THE WORD “WYOMING” COMES FROM A DAKOTA WORD MEANING “LARGE PLAINS.” A state couldn’t be more aptly named. This chapter follows a route taken by more than three hundred thousand emigrants as they traversed the Wyoming Territory on the Oregon Trail, which extended two thousand miles from the Missouri river to Oregon City, Oregon. Southern branches of that trail led Mormons to their Zion and argonauts to their gold-filled California dreams. Later, the Oregon Trail became the course for the transcontinental telegraph and, for the westernmost Wyoming portion of the trail, the path of the Transcontinental railroad—the means of transportation that made all the trails and routes obsolete.
Your journey begins thirty miles west of the nebraska border at Fort Laramie, where the U.S. Army once protected trail pioneers. Nearby, at guernsey, you can see signatures of those travelers and stand in the wheel ruts made by their wagons. Near South Pass City, the best ghost town in Wyoming, you cross South Pass, used by the pioneers because it was the gentlest ascent over the great mountains of the West. Then you visit Fort Bridger, another important way station along the Oregon Trail, where Mormon pioneers left the trail and headed to their destination, the Valley of the great Salt Lake. A final stop west of Fort Bridger shows you a place that originally was a railroad camp for the Transcontinental railroad.
In 1834, fur trader William Sublette built a wooden stockade, called Fort William, near the confluence of the Laramie and Platte rivers to serve as a trading post with the Sioux and Cheyenne, who traded buffalo robes for such items as tobacco, beads, blankets, and munitions. The Platte (“flat” in French) was so named because it is wide but not deep, while the Laramie was named in honor of pioneer French trapper Jacques La Ramie, who had come to the area in about 1815 and died, likely at the hands of Indians, in about 1820.
Fort William was purchased by the American Fur Company two years later and rebuilt in 1841 into an adobe enclave officially known as Fort John. But to virtually anyone who traded there, it was commonly known as Fort Laramie.
Also in 1841, the U.S. Congress passed the Pre-emption Act, which had an enormous effect upon the Territory of Wyoming and Fort Laramie. Within two years, a westward movement of farmers seeking to claim public land, known as the Great Migration, began. For almost twenty years, the business at outposts like Fort Laramie became less about fur trading with Indians and much more about supplying goods to the more than three hundred thousand emigrants traversing the Oregon Trail.
In 1849, the U.S. Army purchased Fort Laramie because emigrants had begun to demand protection from Indians who were becoming increasingly hostile about the incursions into their traditional lands. A new post was erected, and Fort Laramie became a welcome sight on the Wyoming plains for the settlers who depended upon it, after one-third of their intended journey, for both supplies and protection. During the peak years of the early 1850s, more than fifty thousand emigrants passed by Fort Laramie in the short summer season that lasted only about forty-five days. At that time, wagon train camps surrounded the fort as the pioneers purchased food and healthy draft animals while their equipment was serviced or repaired.
During the Civil War, the fort became a stop on the overland mail route and, later, the short-lived Pony Express. When the transcontinental telegraph was extended across Wyoming, Fort Laramie was an important station.
Fort Laramie declined in relevance as emigrant numbers dwindled in the 1860s. When the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, the Oregon Trail largely became a historical curiosity. Fort Laramie was abandoned in 1890 and its buildings auctioned off.
The 1874 cavalry barracks is the earliest building made of lime and concrete to survive in its entirety at Fort Laramie.
WALKING AROUND FORT LARAMIE
Many buildings still stand at the fort today because some were purchased and lived in by settlers while others were protected by concerned agencies as important to chronicling the story of the West.
From the parking area, it’s a short distance to the tree-lined parade ground and a remarkable piece of American history. Start your tour at the 1884 Commissary Storehouse, now a visitors’ center and museum.
Much of the fort is mere foundations, but many restored buildings have survived. Some of the best include the 1874 Cavalry Barracks, the largest structure at the fort; the 1875 Post Surgeon’s Quarters and the 1884 Lieutenant Colonel’s Quarters, both open for inspection and filled with period furnishings; and Old Bedlam, the oldest military building in Wyoming, having been erected in 1849. The lovely, two-story wooden barracks was in a ramshackle state until it was restored, a process that took from 1938 until 1964. Old Bedlam was the quarters of bachelor officers and was the site of much social merriment, likely accounting for the building’s nickname.
The 1849 single officers’ quarters was the center of social life at Fort Laramie, which likely accounts for its unofficial name, Old Bedlam.
The Lieutenant Colonel’s Quarters (right), built in 1884, and the 1875 Post Surgeon’s Quarters (behind) have been refurbished to look as they did in the 1880s.
WHEN YOU GO
The community of Fort Laramie is 106 miles northeast of Cheyenne via U.S. Highways 85 and 26. Historic Fort Laramie is 3 miles southwest of town. En route to the fort you will pass an 1875 military bridge that crosses the Platte River, a marker for the site of the short-lived trading post Fort Platte, and the Fort Laramie Cemetery.
Important note: After you leave Fort Laramie, travel 12 miles northwest on U.S. 85 and 26 to Guernsey to see the Oregon Trail Ruts State Historic Site and the Register Cliff State Historic Site. Both are located south of Guernsey on South Wyoming Avenue. At the former, you can stand in wheel ruts made by pioneer wagons; at the latter, you can read hundreds of signatures of emigrants who carved their names into the soft sandstone walls adjacent to the trail.