Fort Laramie, Wyoming – July 25th 2017: Most Important Fort In US Western History

Staci here doing this post! Kyle has impressed me over and over on how he looks at the landscapes and points out why he would or would not travel across certain areas or build in places.  He did a previous post on the 33 mile adventure following the actual Oregon Trail but what he didn’t talk about was the explanation of why the pioneers went certain ways and not others!  From the beginning of our trip, I called him our “Wagon Master”, that’s because he can look at maps that Google says are just fine to drive our 60 ft+ wagon down but in reality it turns out to be a SCARY adventure!  Did I say SCARY?!  Well, there are finger imprints on the edge of the passenger side window where my fingers dig in when we are on those SCARY adventures!  Anyway, back to Fort Laramie!

I have always wanted to visit this Fort because of my major interest in the Oregon Trail.  This fort was considered to be the most important Fort in Western US History.  I wanted to visit it with my Wagon Master/Trail Blazer who would explain to me why they built the fort where they did. When we first got there BEFORE we even looked at the actual buildings, he had given me a great overview as to how they would have laid it out.  Sure enough, it was true to what he described!  

Now, we took about 100 photos but I will post what I thought were the most interesting (at least to me!).

This picture was taken for the enlisted bunkhouse in the background.  It was so BIG that I had to walk this far away to get the picture.  <giggling>  It didn’t hurt that I also got my sweetie following the Docent to the garden to pick a tomato for me from the garden.  What a sweetie to try to score me a homegrown tomato! 

 These two photos are of the entire top floor of the barracks. As you can see, I don’t do really well with selfies! LOL I was impressed that both ends were almost exactly the same!

The next photo was of the mess hall on the bottom floor, again impressed me with how BIG it was.  Apparently there were quite a few more of these barracks back in the heyday of the fort!

The next photo in contrast was the Officer’s Quarters, what a HUGE difference! This house was split up into 4 complete apartments w/offices.  

Now, maybe I should have posted this part first, but Kyle had informed me way back when, that you needed running water when building a fort and besides the need for water to drink and cook with the other reason was they dumped their poop and pee AND the horses manure INTO the river to be floated away! I always thought they dug big holes and just buried it, WRONG!!! I was TOTALLY grossed out about this but in our other fort visits, they never showed you anything about it so it was accepted by me as just a factoid.  It was made VERY clear to me just how REAL it was by the next picture, see the river in the background!!!!

While looking at the photos to post, I realized something else that totally grossed me out, between the Stables and the Latrine was the place where they washed the clothes, or rather the women that washed the clothes!  Ugh, can you imagine just how unsanitary that must have been!  I know they often boiled the clothes but SOMEONE had to go fetch water from that river!  No wonder dysentery, cholera and typhoid fever were so prevalent back then!

I thought the parade ground was pretty cool and HUGE!

 Different view of the parade ground and us

 Just another photo of the old buildings on the fort!

I just thought this was poignant and talks about how hard it was to live back then!

 Now, this is the last thing to show you about the fort and that is the bridge that changed the west forever.  I also have two videos that I took as I walked over the bridge.


 

Even Kyle thought this was a cool fort and I learned a LOT about it from my sweet and patient husband! 

I would highly recommend coming to the historic fort and seeing what it was like to live in the old west!  Thank you Babe for taking me here!