General Philip Sheridan was a graduate of West Point who served in the Civil War. Under General Grant’s command, he was instrumental in blocking Confederate General Lee at Appomattox.
In 1868, during the building of the Transcontinental Railroad through Wyoming, General Sheridan was part of a group gathered for a meeting of officials representing the Union Pacific Railroad and officers from Fort Sanders. Attendees included Generals P. H. Sheridan, John Gibbon, U.S. Grant, William T. Sherman and Joseph H. Potter, Commander of Fort Sanders.
General William Tecumseh Sherman was a graduate of West Point who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. He was also a businessman, educator, banker and author.
Two months after Confederate General Lee’s surrender, Sherman was given a command that comprised the territory from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.
In 1868, General Sherman was part of a group gathered for a meeting of officials representing the Union Pacific Railroad and officers from Fort Sanders. Attendees included Generals P. H. Sheridan, John Gibbon, U.S. Grant, Adam Slemmer and Joseph H. Potter, Commander of Fort Sanders.
The guardhouse is the single substantially intact building remaining on the site of the Fort Sanders military reservation. The establishment of Laramie City in the spring of 1868, situated about three miles north of the Fort Sanders post, prompted the construction of the guardhouse. As Laramie’s economy boomed, desertion rates at Fort Sanders soared. Drunkenness and boisterousness ran rampant among the troops stationed at Fort Sanders and the guardhouse was usually full.
William Price Sanders was an officer in the Union Army in the American Civil War who died at the Siege of Knoxville. The Battle of Fort Sanders, part of the Knoxville Campaign fought in Tennessee, occurred approximately 10 days after his death.
There are two forts named in his honor, including Fort Sanders where the Cavalryman Steakhouse in Laramie, Wyoming is located. The other is located in Tennessee.
The first Fort Laramie (named Fort William at the time) as it looked prior to 1840. Painting from memory by Alfred Jacob Miller.
Originally established as a private fur trading fort in 1834, Fort Laramie evolved into the largest and best known military post on the Northern Plains before its abandonment in 1890. This “grand old post” witnessed the entire sweeping saga of America’s western expansion alongside Native American resistance to encroachment on their territories.
The popular view of a western fort, perhaps generated by Hollywood movies, is that of an enclosure surrounded by a wall or stockade. Fort Laramie, however, was never enclosed by a wall. Initial plans for the fort included a wooden fence or a thick structure of rubble, 9 feet high, that enclosed an area 550 x 650 feet. Because of the high costs involved, however, the wall was never built. Fort Laramie was always an open fort that depended upon its location and its garrison of troops for security.
In 1841, it was purchased by the American Fur Company and renamed Fort John. In 1849, it was purchased by the United State Army for the purpose of protecting the many wagon trains of migrant travelers on the Oregon Trail.
Christopher Houston “Kit” Carson (Dec. 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American explorer, guide, fur trapper, Indian agent, rancher, and soldier who traveled through the southwestern and western United States. Carson became a frontier legend in his lifetime through biographies and news articles written about his adventures. Exaggerated versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels at the time.
Fur Trade Rendezvous began in Wyoming in 1825 near present day Burnt Fort. Until 1840, they were held near Pinedale, Kemmerer, or on the Wind River near Riverton and Lander. Occasionally, they were held in Utah or Idaho.
Rendezvous were like trade fairs where trappers and Native Americans sold pelts to the fur companies and the fur companies sold or traded goods and other wares to them in exchange.
At the 1832 Rendezvous at Pierre’s Hole, there were approximately 120 lodges of Nez Perce, 80 Flatheads, 90 trappers from Dripps & Fontenelle, 100 trappers from the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, 100 men from Sublette and Campbell, assorted independent trappers, as well as a caravan from John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company in attendance.
Sir William Drummond Stewart, 7th Baronet (1795 – 1871) was a Scottish adventurer and British military officer who traveled extensively in the American West in the 1830s. To document his trip, he hired American artist Alfred Jacob Miller to join him.
Miller (1810-1874) is famous today for his images of the American West, specifically of the Rocky Mountain fur trade and its participants, including this 5 x 9-foot portrait of Captain Stewart during one of his early trips to the mountains.
Many of Miller’s completed oil paintings of American Native American life and the Rocky Mountains originally hung in Murthy Castle in the U.K., though they have now been dispersed to a number of private and public collections.
