Fort Sanders Guardhouse

The Fort Sanders Guardhouse is the single substantially intact building remaining on the site of this military reservation, erected in 1866 to protect and defend encroaching modern civilization in the Rocky Mountain West. Initially, Fort Sanders troops aided emigrants traveling the Lodgepole Trail. In September of 1868, for example, fort ledgers record the passage of 789 wagons, 1,067 men, 101 women, 184 children, 856 horses, 950 mules, and 3,789 oxen.2 Fort Sanders troops also protected the Denver and Salt Lake stage line. 3 In the post's sixteen-year existence its troops were involved in twenty major skirmishes with Indians, although no battles occurred on fort grounds. Since men garrisoned at Fort Sanders participated in General Custer's military campaign of 1876,5 it seems likely some probably fell at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

In 1867 the Union Pacific Railroad came onto the high plains of southern Wyoming. Surveyors and engineers, the vanguard of this massive scheme, were particularly vulnerable to Indian attack, and thus needed the aid of Fort Sanders troops. Tie cutters then invaded the nearby mountains, also with military guards, and track layers followed. These large crews were prone to Indian strikes and the Union Pacific depended on the force of military might to maintain a rapid pace of construction.

In July, 1868 perhaps the most impressive gathering of military leaders since Appoma tox convened at Fort Sanders. Two months before, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had received a virtual mandate from his party as a candidate for President of the United States. Perhaps Grant considered his election a certainty, for he did little campaigning. He came to Fort Sanders, about as far from the voting public as one could get in those days, accompanied by General William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan, along with several other high-ranking officers. Grant and his retinue came to review a controversy concerning the rail's route across southern Wyoming. Thomas Durant, a vice president of the Union Pacific, had accused Gen. Grenville Dodge, chief engineer of the railroad's construction, or poorly planning the path.

For several reasons, this dissension concerned General Grant. As a means of consolidating federal power over the divergent politics of the reunited nation, the railroad had no equal. By opening up a major new avenue of commerce the Union Pacific could undercut the renascent power structures of several recalcitrant southern states. Also, recent developments in Mexico indicated some European countries had an active interest in North American politics. This potential threat to national sovereignty could be deterred by a swift means of conveying military troops to the west coast. At Fort Sanders Grant urged the rapid completion of the railroad and reconfirmed General Dodge's appointment as chief engineer of the Union Pacific.

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. Life in young Laramie was literally untamed. Gunfights, garrottings, and sordid displays of public drunkenness were common sights. As a short-termed but important hub of commercial activity in the Rocky Mountain west, Laramie provided the soldiers with several means of illicitly exempting himself from military duty. Pack trains heading to Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota gold and silver fields were often outfitted in Laramie, and by joining up with a team of prospectors one could escape loathsome servitude and find considerable adventure. Of course, several other means of escape were available, and as Laramie's economy bloomed desertion rates at Fort Sanders soared.9 Likewise, drunkenness and boisterousness were endemic among the troops stationed at Fort Sanders, and when the guardhouse was completed early in 1869 it was usually full.

The guardhouse was built mostly of locally obtained materials. Soldiers quarried the stone about six miles from the post and mined lime on the fort grounds.12 The stone came damp and clay-like from the earth but hardened on exposure. 13 Well-paid professional masons constructed the walls of the guardhouse and professional carpenters completed the building. 14 Probably the nails, cell and window bars, and other hardware were created at the fort blacksmith shop, which employed several professional smithies. 15 Likely the roof consisted of whip-sawed rafters and beams cut up at the fort sawmill, a layer of tarpaper, and hand-split pine shingles.
Only a few other buildings in the Laramie region utilized the same red sandstone and white lime mortar used on the Fort Sanders guardhouse, perhaps because the Union Pacific depleted the most accessible sources when erecting the large machine shops and round house (1869) that stood within a mile of the post grounds. Since the demolition of these railroad structures, the Fort Sanders guardhouse appears to be one of the few surviving examples around Laramie of a building made from these indigenous, barely transformed materials. Others in the city may exist under several layers of stucco. However, as an appropriate visual expression of the hardy beauty of the Laramie plains, the Fort Sanders guardhouse has no extant parallel.

After the completion of Fort D. A. Russell at Cheyenne late in 1868, the importance of Fort Sanders began to wane. The War Department maintained Fort, Sanders until 1882, when the property and buildings were sold and the post vacated. 16 The Fort's bountiful gardens and young trees soon withered and died. Now, only the guardhouse remains.

In 1914 a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a monument upon the former site of Fort Sanders, about five hundred feet west of the guardhouse.

The eight-foot-tall stone marker stands along old U.S. Highway 287, as a newer highway has been routed several hundred yards east. Governor Joseph M. Carey spoke at the monument's dedication. These grounds were hallowed," he said, by the pioneers and famous persons who once traversed them. It, therefore, seems appropriate to recommend the present property be placed on the National Register as a means of reaffirming Fort Sanders' importance in the development of the West.