{"id":1902,"slug":"fort-fetterman-wyoming","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Fort Fetterman was named for a massacre and built for a war the treaty kept postponing. The 1867 post rose on a bluff above the North Platte where the Bozeman Trail branched north — named for Captain William Fetterman, killed with all eighty of his men near Fort Phil Kearny the winter before. When the 1868 treaty closed the other Bozeman forts, Fetterman became the army's last supply base in the heart of the country Crazy Horse called 'a source of irritation.'","The fort's war was mostly logistics — the staging point for Crook's 1876 campaigns that marched toward the Little Bighorn, the post where Jim Bridger, Calamity Jane, and Buffalo Bill passed through on the way to everything else. The garrison's own record is a first winter under canvas in 'violent and almost constant gales,' then adobe, wood, and stone growing into the post that held the North Platte crossing for fifteen years.","The fort's second life was wilder than its first — abandoned in 1882, it became Fetterman City, the 'hog ranch' town of saloons and brothels serving the cattle boom, until the railroad reached Douglas seven miles south and killed it. Owen Wister visited and used it as the model for Drybone in his fiction. The restored officers' quarters and ordnance warehouse are the state's historic site now — the fort Crazy Horse singled out, standing over the river bend where the frontier's supply line finally ran out of frontier.","Fort Fetterman is the archive's supply-base file — the 1867 North Platte post named for the Fetterman Fight's dead commander, Crook's staging ground toward Little Bighorn, abandoned into a hog-ranch town the railroad then abandoned too."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Fort Fetterman is the archive's Bozeman file — the last post standing after the 1868 treaty emptied the trail's other forts, the bluff where the army staged its 1876 campaigns and where 'Drybone' was born after the army left.","A fort that outlived its war keeps its bluff — the file's suggestion being that Fetterman's hold is the position: the crossing it guarded, the saloons that replaced it, and the two buildings Wyoming keeps of the post that irritated Crazy Horse."]}],"name":"Fort Fetterman","aliases":[],"type":"FORT","type_label":"Fort","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","GHOST_TOWN","MILITARY","FORT"],"groups":["dark-history","ghost-towns","institutions"],"desc":"Military post later reused as a frontier town.","full_desc":"Fort Fetterman is a fort in Douglas, Wyoming, opened in 1867. Military post later reused as a frontier town. The archive files it under dark history, ghost towns and forts. The dossier holds 2 documented facts — the record is history-forward, no paranormal claims on file. The site is open to visitors. The dossier keeps the place and the story in the same record — which is what the archive is for.","address":null,"city":"Douglas","county":null,"state":"Wyoming","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":42.754773,"lon":-105.397802,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":1867,"year_closed":1882,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Fort and succeeding Fetterman City overlap; not a separate town record without footprint mapping. Namesake died at a different battlefield, not here. Source uses outdated colonial framing; summary identifies military role without adopting it.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":67.9,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Established in 1867 as an Army supply post; military abandonment in 1882 preceded Fetterman City. The site's documented military history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. Sources including 'About Fort Fetterman' carry the record. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"About Fort Fetterman","url":"https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/about-fort-fetterman","publisher":"Wyoming State Parks","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"Fort Fetterman operated 1867–1882; the site is preserved as a state historic site. The record dates it to 1867-01-01–1882-01-01. A fort with documented casualties writes its own foundation — the lore comes after. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. The record appears in 'Fort Fetterman State Historic Site'. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1867-01-01","date_end":"1882-01-01","confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Fort Fetterman State Historic Site","url":"https://wyoparks.wyo.gov","publisher":"Wyoming State Parks","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[{"name":"Fort Fetterman establishment","type":"MILITARY_ESTABLISHMENT","date_start":"1867-07-19","date_end":null,"description":"On July 19, 1867, the Army established Fort Fetterman near the crossing of the Bozeman Trail and the Oregon Trail corridor, naming it for a brevet brigadier general killed in the Fetterman Fight months earlier. For fifteen years it was the supply hub and staging post for campaigns across the Powder River country — remote enough that deserters had nowhere to run.","evidence":"MILITARY_ESTABLISHMENT","source":{"name":"About Fort Fetterman","url":"https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/about-fort-fetterman","publisher":"Wyoming State Parks","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"name":"Fort military abandonment","type":"CLOSURE","date_start":"1882","date_end":null,"description":"The Army abandoned Fort Fetterman in 1882 as the Indian Wars waned and railroads shifted supply lines south. Civilians salvaged the post — its buildings seeded the Fetterman community — and two restored structures now anchor a state historic site on the bluff above the North Platte, still commanding the same view the soldiers watched.","evidence":"CLOSURE","source":{"name":"About Fort Fetterman","url":"https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/about-fort-fetterman","publisher":"Wyoming State Parks","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"operating_season":"Public museum access described for summer","last_verified_at":"2026-09-14T10:36:21+00:00","source":{"name":"About Fort Fetterman","url":"https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/about-fort-fetterman","publisher":"Wyoming State Parks","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},"sources":[{"name":"About Fort Fetterman","url":"https://wyoparks.wyo.gov/index.php/about-fort-fetterman","publisher":"Wyoming State Parks","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"Fort Fetterman State Historic Site","url":"https://wyoparks.wyo.gov","publisher":"Wyoming State Parks","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"Military post later reused as a frontier town.","incoming_value":"The frontier post that outlived its usefulness—then became a rowdy town.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"full_description","existing_value":"Fort Fetterman is a fort in Wyoming. Military post later reused as a frontier town. Established in 1867 as an Army supply post; military abandonment in 1882 preceded Fetterman City.","incoming_value":"Fort Fetterman is the Douglas bluff-top post that guarded the Bozeman Trail country (1867–1882), then became a rough frontier town. The surviving officer’s quarters and ordnance are preserved as a state historic site.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"current_status","existing_value":"HISTORIC_SITE","incoming_value":"ACTIVE","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"Fort and succeeding Fetterman City overlap; not a separate town record without footprint mapping. Namesake died at a different battlefield, not here. Source uses outdated colonial framing; summary identifies military role without adopting it.","incoming_value":"Lore enrichment wave 2; VERIFY task auto-queued.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"Fort Fetterman","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Fetterman","desc":"United States historic place","extract":"Fort Fetterman was constructed in 1867 by the United States Army on the Great Plains frontier in Dakota Territory, approximately 11 miles northwest of present-day Douglas, Wyoming. Located high on the bluffs south of the North Platte River, it served as a major base for the start of several United States military expeditions against warring Native American tribes. The fort is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Sketch_of_General_Crook%27s_arrival_at_Fort_Fetterman_in_Wyoming_Territory.jpg/330px-Sketch_of_General_Crook%27s_arrival_at_Fort_Fetterman_in_Wyoming_Territory.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":93,"lat":42.84027778,"lon":-105.47972222},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":2,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":2}}