We arrived at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, around 6:30 and had the place to ourselves — well there were a bunch of bunnies and one ranger who left his lair long enough to give us each a brochure. (Jill visited Fort Laramie two years ago and says that they too had it to themselves except for a ranger or two.)
It may be quiet now but Fort Laramie was once one of the crucial outposts on the frontier. It was founded as a fur-trading center in 1834 near the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers. In the 1840s it became an important stop on the Oregon Trail.
As the Oregon boom and California gold rush escalated traffic on the Trail, relations with Indians became stressed. The army purchased the outpost in 1849. Fort Laramie was a stop on the short-lived Pony Express. After the Civil War, it became increasingly a military staging area in the Indian wars and a safe haven for travelers on the Deadwood-Cheyenne stagecoach route.
Fort Laramie was abandoned as a military post in 1890. It seems pretty well abandoned by everyone else today.
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