The Oregon Trail's most famous stop - Fort Laramie

Scott: 00:00:15

Welcome to Talk With History.

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I'm your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian, Jen.

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On this podcast, we give you insights into our history inspired world travels,

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YouTube channel journey, and examine history through deeper conversations

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with the curious, the explorers, and the history lovers out there.

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I'm going to ask a favor that's a little bit different to our listeners today.

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I want you guys, if you're listening, To take a screenshot of your podcast

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player right now, take a screenshot and then text that to a friend that you

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think might enjoy this episode, because we're going to talk about an interesting

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topic and I'm sure you saw it from the episode title today, but I bet there's

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plenty of folks that probably played.

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Oregon Trail when they were kids.

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So take a screenshot real quick.

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You can text it to a friend later, tell them to look us up and

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listen to this episode, because I think they're going to enjoy it.

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Now,

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today we're embarking on a journey to the rugged landscapes of Wyoming where

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the echoes of the past still resonate through the walls of Fort Laramie.

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Our spotlight shines on an iconic waypoint of the American West where

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cultures collide, treaters were signed.

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And the dreams of a new life were kindled along the Oregon Trail.

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Nestled at the crossroads of adventure and opportunity, Fort Laramie holds within

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its weathered bricks and timbers a saga that shaped the destiny of a nation.

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From its humble beginnings as a fur trading post in the early 19th

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century, to its pivotal role as a military garrison and treaty ground,

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this historic site witnessed tales of hardship, Camaraderie and transformation.

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Now Jen, we got to walk for Laramie.

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It was a very windy day.

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Windy Wyoming.

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But tell us about it.

Jenn: 00:02:35

So, Fort Laramie, it holds a special place in my heart because growing

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up in Cheyenne, this was a, probably a yearly stop for your field trips.

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Sure.

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And as you age, you learn different stories of the fort.

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Yeah.

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But, uh, You kind of went at a young age, I think fourth, fifth grade is when

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I first went out there, and I remember learning, you know, about the families

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that came through on the Oregon Trail, and as you got older, you learn more

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about the cultures of the American Indian, and the soldier, and the treaties,

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and a lot of the survival, uh, that happened during that time and the change.

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But, um, yeah, Fort Laramie, I also played Oregon trail a lot and I

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actually have a handheld game of it that I don't even let the kids play.

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I got that for you for Christmas.

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Yes.

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And so Fort Laramie is very significant cause it's a stop on the Oregon

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trail, but also on the Mormon trail.

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And on the California trail, so there's like three trails that kind of go

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through that area of people who were homesteading, making their way out West

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and it would come through that area.

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Yeah.

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And actually for the video, that's one of the things we show early

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in the video was kind of a map showing the convergence of some of these

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trails and how they, how everything really converged at Fort Laramie.

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Yeah,

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it did because it was pretty much the last stop before it's going to get.

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Really rough.

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Yeah before the Rockies.

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Before the Rockies.

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Before the mountains.

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And so Fort Laramie started out and I want to talk about the name so in 1815

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there it's along a river there and a lot of fur trapping is happening in the

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West for beaver pelts because everyone has their fur hats and there was a fur

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trapper named Jacques Oh, interesting.

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And he went out to trap in like, um, 1918 or 1920 and he was never seen again.

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And the story goes that the Arapaho, who were one of the tribes out there

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at the time, uh, killed him and put his body in a beaver dam in that river.

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Huh.

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And so they called it the Laramie.

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River.

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And so you're gonna get Fort Laramie, you're gonna get the city of Laramie, all

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of that is named after that fur trader

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of 1815.

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Wow, now that's an interesting one.

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That's a little bit different.

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It's not just named after some famous person who was out there first and

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kind of planted their flag, so.

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At about the 1930s, so about 15 years later, this

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becomes a very significant stop.

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for the fur trade.

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Yeah, 1830s.

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1830s.

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Oh, sorry.

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Yes.

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Yes.

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1830s.

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So about 15 years later, 1830s.

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So when you think of the remnant with Leonardo DiCaprio, right?

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These fur trappers who are out there making their living by hunting

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wildlife and buffalo and the hides.

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And the beaver pelt, and because it's right there along a river, and I talk

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about with this river, there's life.

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This is a place where trading is happening between the white fur

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traders and the American Indians that are out there at the time.

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And so it gets started as Fort William in 1830.

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And that's kind of what it is for a significant amount of time and

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really until about 15 years later.

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when the U.

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S.

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Army will purchase it in 1849.

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And that's when it really becomes Fort Laramie.

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And that's when the Army will come on and it's going to become, uh, you

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know, a trading post, a diplomatic site, and then it's the military

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installations that are there.

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Well,

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and it makes sense to me that The military would kind of establish

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itself there because, you know, us being in the military and the Navy, right?

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Navy bases are on strategic coastal areas.

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Same thing with army, army forts, right?

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So it makes sense to me that there, it's such a conversion,

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such a central point in that.

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Western part of what wasn't even the United States yet.

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No, you know, it was really just kind of a wild Western territories That they

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would they would set up shop there because it was such a kind of a strategic spot.

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Sure.

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So if you watch 1883 or anything like that on TV you see how the

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wagon trains are very vulnerable as they're heading out west for attacks

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from so Fort Laramie the military kind of set it up there for a stop

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where you could be safe, you could

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regroup.

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Because there wasn't any

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treaties yet.

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There wasn't any treaties yet.

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So the first treaty would happen in 1851.

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And that treaty does happen because of the unrest and the attacks that are happening.

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And there is a compromise where the American Indians won't attack, uh, and

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over 10, 000 people from the Northern Plains gathered near the fort and they

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pledged to allow, uh, the immigrants or the, um, the settlers to have safe passage

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and return for 50, 000 in antiquity goods.

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But two years later, the piece is broken.

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I mean, this is just, you know, this is a time of unrest of

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cultures clashing in America.

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Uh, and you're going to get during this time in just 1949 alone,

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like that one year where they first start the fort, you get.

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20, 000 to 40, 000, uh, people coming through there and we

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show the ways they traveled.

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The Mormons had those carts, those hand

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carts, hand drawn carts.

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I mean, it's not like they had a bunch of horse, horse drawn carts.

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I mean, they had some oxen, like you were pointing out in the video, but it was

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mostly like, them carrying it by hand.

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Carrying it by hand.

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So when you think about this, I want people to think like it wasn't the horses.

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It's oxen.

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Oxen are a little more hardy.

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And not everybody has that because not everyone people are

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trying to make their fortune.

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So they don't have really a lot of money to have those things.

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And plus I show the wagon and all the things that You would put in a wagon.

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It's just more weight.

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It's more time and people would leave those things along the way

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And I thought it was interesting too that you pointed out

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with kind of some close up shots of the wagon I didn't realize that the

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wheels had metal rims around them

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Yeah, so they're made of wood but they have metal rims around

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them and that's again for the sturdiness of the wheel and And it

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gives you longevity of the wheel.

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But if you throw a wheel, just like if you play Oregon Trail, if you throw a

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wheel, break a wheel, you have to fix the wheel or have another wheel, or you have

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to leave the wagon behind, basically.

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And so a lot of people are walking.

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There's not, you know, some people are riding horses.

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And we've talked about different characters in history, Cody,

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Buffalo Cody, and people who are giving assistance to wagon trains.

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But a lot of people are walking and the handcart is just a remnant of that.

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Yeah.

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And, and it was.

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It was pretty neat being at Fort Laramie because not only were

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there the new, obviously the newer buildings like the visitor center

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and things like that, but there were the remnants of these old buildings.

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Like one of the shots, some of my favorite shots that I was able to get that kind

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of gave you the feel for what it must have looked like was the old hospital.

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Yes.

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You know, now is the old hospital is literally just some like ruins of like

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four or five walls, but there, there are some pretty old structures that are still

Jenn: 00:10:03

standing there.

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So they have kind of a mix of, uh, of ruins and restored structures.

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So there is, the hospital is ruins, but then they have some barracks that

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have been restored, but there were more than just that one building of

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barracks, but the restored barracks, you get a sense for what it looked like.

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They, they put cots in there, they put the tables in there, they put places where

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the men ate, and they show you also the tents because that also was overflow.

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And then they have officer housing, but they have ruins of officer housing.

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But one of the oldest structures.

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And I think it's the oldest structure in Wyoming is there at Fort Laramie.

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It's old Bedlam.

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Yeah, that's right.

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So old Bedlam was a bachelor officer's quarters.

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It was built in 1849.

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And this is Wyoming's oldest documented building that is still standing.

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And like I said, it was bachelor officers quarters in the 1850s.

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And then it was a post headquarters 1860s.

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And they have it kind of recreated.

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So you can look in the window, you know, look in the doors and see what

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And if I remember right you said it got the name Old Bedlam because of all

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this noise and sound Yeah, kept coming out of all the rowdiness that kept coming out

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because it was bachelors quarters, right?

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So they're having a grand

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old time which another thing I talk about is how Unless it was, they

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say, the big two months of when people were really coming through Fort Laramie.

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Probably summertime.

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It was boring.

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It really was a boring place to be stationed.

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And I think

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when I did the research and I put it on the video, it was about

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three to four hundred men that were stationed there at any given time.

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Probably, it probably fluxed a little bit there, but that's a

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good chunk to just be sitting.

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And driving up to Fort Laramie was kind of my first time driving through Wyoming.

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Um, I may have driven in parts of Wyoming when I was really, really

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young, but driving, you know, from there, we had drove up from Cheyenne

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and it's just vast open spaces.

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Like I've never.

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So, driving out west in that part of the country, like you

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truly feel smaller out there.

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You get a real sense of how just grandiose everything is and then you get up to

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Fort Laramie and like, man, Fort Laramie is relatively well known and a lot of

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people kind of associate it with, with the Oregon Trail as a, as a stopping point.

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But there is nothing around

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there.

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So when you hit it.

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Think about how excited people were because this is

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a like a communication hub.

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This is like The principal military post on the Northern Plains.

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So this is where it's stage lines are gonna come through Pony

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Express is gonna come through The Transcontinental Telegraph, they're

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all gonna pass through Fort Laramie.

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And you saw how windy it was that day.

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It was so frustrating from a filming standpoint because it

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was so windy it actually made it a little bit less pleasant to actually

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walk around and try to enjoy it.

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Um, I mean, it's tough, but you were used to it, right?

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Cause you grew up there.

Jenn: 00:13:06

That's typical Wyoming.

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And so we always would say windy Wyoming because it's the plains.

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So when you live on the plains, there's nothing stopping the wind.

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And so it can, the wind just whips through.

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Now it's not cold wind.

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It's like a warm wind.

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It's kind of like a Santa Ana kind of thing if you live in California.

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But it's very windy, but it just was interesting to to be there and to be

Jenn: 00:13:28

out there and to see it As an adult after coming so many times as a children

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as a child but they they have again, it's a mix of restored buildings and

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ruins, but they they had a demonstration where they fired a cannon And the

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Visitor's Center is like an old, um, warehouse, stores warehouse, so that's

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where the Visitor's Center is now.

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And they have a, they had a teepee out there, so you could see the

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American Indians who would come there.

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And I will say one thing before we move on to kind of

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some of the other structures.

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The Visitor's Center, so for our kids, we tend to take, you know, our kids

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to the Visitor's Center so they can do whatever kind of booklet that they have

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for them to do for a Junior Ranger thing.

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It's usually some sort of scavenger hunt.

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The scavenger hunt at Fort Laramie is no joke.

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Freaking joke.

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I mean, we weren't able to finish the whole thing because it's because

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everything's so spread out because there's so much space there They

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don't have to be close and confined.

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So I'm tracking around with our eight year old daughter And we weren't

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able to finish the whole thing.

Jenn: 00:14:28

It's a lot because it was prayed ground there It

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was so much there's so much that you could spend an entire

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day there with you with kids

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easily well and like You're thinking of all these families coming

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through on the Oregon Trail and they're going to set up their little camps, and

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so they're going to want a place along the river, they're going to want some

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area, they're going to want some space, so that's kind of what it's set up for.

Jenn: 00:14:52

We, some of the significant things that come out of Fort Laramie, we talk about

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pretty often is the Treaty of 1868 and that treaty is the one that is going

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to be controversial for the Sioux Wars.

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This is the one that sets up the actual reservation for the

Jenn: 00:15:09

Black Hills for the Lakota Sioux.

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And when that's broken, when gold is discovered and the Lakota

Jenn: 00:15:15

Sioux leave, that is the treaty that they're trying to enforce.

Jenn: 00:15:19

Uh, but they amend it and they break down that one reservation.

Jenn: 00:15:25

in, on the Black Hills into the six other reservations leading up to Little

Jenn: 00:15:29

Bighorn leading up to Little Bighorn.

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So it's always the Treaty of Fort Laramie that they're talking about.

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So it is a diplomatic site in that regard.

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It's a well known area.

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It's where the American Indians would travel to, to meet with the

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government and the people who are representing the government there to, to

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negotiate those treaties.

Scott: 00:15:49

Oh, yeah.

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I mean, and it was some relatively well known Native American leaders.

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I mean, I don't know if it was.

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Sitting bowl or red cloud.

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Yeah, so some very well known even even to us to the average.

Scott: 00:16:00

Yeah, you know Uh, American, you know, kind of growing up here,

Scott: 00:16:04

here in the states that, that met there to sign these treaties.

Jenn: 00:16:10

That's kind of one of the things I really liked about Fort Laramie.

Jenn: 00:16:13

It's, it's tied to a lot of American history.

Jenn: 00:16:15

We talked about calamity Jane was at Fort Laramie, she's actually

Jenn: 00:16:19

was at the hospital there.

Jenn: 00:16:21

Uh, this is where she's gonna meet with the wagon train with Wild Bill Hickok,

Jenn: 00:16:25

and they're gonna leave from Fort Laramie on their way up to Deadwood.

Jenn: 00:16:29

South Dakota.

Jenn: 00:16:30

Uh, there's an old bordello that's about a mile from Fort Laramie.

Jenn: 00:16:35

We didn't happen to hit that, but that is, uh, a, a, a national site and, uh, that

Jenn: 00:16:42

Calamity Jane worked out of that bordello.

Jenn: 00:16:44

So, I mean, of course, where there's soldiers, there's,

Scott: 00:16:48

there's business, there's old

Jenn: 00:16:49

doves.

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Um, and so the Fort is just very.

Jenn: 00:16:54

busy and prosperous during these Oregon Trail years, but by 1890 it's

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when it's it's closed It's not there.

Jenn: 00:17:04

No one's coming through much anymore.

Jenn: 00:17:06

It's it's sold at auction I mean,

Scott: 00:17:09

is that largely because had the railroads kind of gotten set up by

Scott: 00:17:12

then was it just taking it past them?

Jenn: 00:17:14

Sure.

Jenn: 00:17:14

So after the railroad was complete It, it kind of passed Fort Laramie, so the fort's

Jenn: 00:17:20

importance is going to be diminished.

Jenn: 00:17:23

Uh, the last soldier is going to leave April 20th, 1890, but, um, in

Jenn: 00:17:27

1938, President Roosevelt is going to proclaim Fort Laramie a national

Jenn: 00:17:32

monument, and then it's designated a National Historic Site in 1960.

Jenn: 00:17:37

So it really doesn't look so much different from that.

Jenn: 00:17:41

You can tell that they're working on some things and preserving some

Jenn: 00:17:43

things, but really when you go there.

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It really is a snapshot of probably what it looked like

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when it closed there in 1890.

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And that

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really was a lot of these places we got to visit in the

Scott: 00:17:55

West was really neat because you really got to have that feel right.

Scott: 00:18:00

It didn't they haven't built up Fort Laramie that much and

Scott: 00:18:03

there's nothing really around it.

Scott: 00:18:04

And I can't really think of any like brand new structures that probably weren't.

Scott: 00:18:09

Where a former structure would have been you know, so there was a lot of the

Scott: 00:18:13

officers quarters Those ones were still built up and then they had some ruins

Scott: 00:18:16

for other kind of you had pointed out in the video some Administrative buildings.

Scott: 00:18:20

Yes that were near the officers quarter one building that looked like there

Scott: 00:18:24

was there had been a theater there Was it there a school like a school

Scott: 00:18:27

at one point and actually they talk I don't think it made it into the

Scott: 00:18:32

video, but they had talked a little bit about, um, the schooling there.

Scott: 00:18:35

It wasn't standardized.

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And so they were kind of like fighting for their own things.

Scott: 00:18:39

And that was something that, that led to standardization

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in the future within Wyoming.

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Um, so there, you really got, got a snapshot being there

Scott: 00:18:48

because it's just so spread out.

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It's like, you feel like you're in the middle of the plains.

Scott: 00:18:52

You can

Jenn: 00:18:53

tell that, uh, land is not an issue.

Jenn: 00:18:55

Not at all.

Jenn: 00:18:56

There's, so the guardhouse is there, the old guardhouse and the boys got

Jenn: 00:19:00

a kick out of that, our boys, because it was built to hold 40 prisoners,

Jenn: 00:19:04

but it often held a lot more.

Jenn: 00:19:07

So you can imagine people getting rowdy and things like that.

Jenn: 00:19:11

Very long, like makeshift.

Jenn: 00:19:12

beds just to like, uh, basically, uh, put people in, in one cell and

Jenn: 00:19:17

lock them all in there together.

Jenn: 00:19:18

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:19:19

I

Scott: 00:19:19

did enjoy some of what they did to kind of preserve and kind of recreate,

Scott: 00:19:23

you know, like the post office and the general store, because you even said

Scott: 00:19:27

like the men there would be so bored sometimes that they were writing a

Scott: 00:19:30

letter every day or every other day.

Scott: 00:19:33

And the Pony Express coming through there, they could deliver mail on a,

Scott: 00:19:36

I assume on a fairly regular business.

Scott: 00:19:38

But we got to walk through some of the officers quarters and captains quarters.

Scott: 00:19:42

And they had a lot of artifacts that looked, if not from the period,

Scott: 00:19:48

you know, very well recreated.

Scott: 00:19:50

You know, dresses and, and.

Scott: 00:19:52

You know, kids toys and rocking horses and all the stuff.

Scott: 00:19:56

Well,

Jenn: 00:19:56

because there were, like, the Lieutenant Colonel and the post

Jenn: 00:19:59

surgeon brought their families.

Jenn: 00:20:02

So, there was, you know, women there with their children, so they did,

Jenn: 00:20:05

they showed what that would look like if you had your family there.

Jenn: 00:20:09

And I even think the post surgeon, he had lived there for something

Jenn: 00:20:12

like, uh, 10 years with his family.

Jenn: 00:20:15

Wow.

Jenn: 00:20:15

So they spent a long time at Fort Laramie.

Jenn: 00:20:18

What's neat about Fort Laramie too is the river kind of hugs it like a U.

Jenn: 00:20:24

So the fort is inside that so you can imagine there's lots of riverbank

Jenn: 00:20:29

for people to wash their clothing and get water for cooking or you know for

Jenn: 00:20:36

cleanliness and so that is what is so useful about the fort with all of these

Jenn: 00:20:41

homesteaders, immigrants, you know trail People coming through is all that

Jenn: 00:20:46

access to water along the the river.

Jenn: 00:20:50

So, uh, yeah It's it's it's very neat.

Jenn: 00:20:53

I definitely say visit.

Jenn: 00:20:55

It's free National Park Service and They have people again who are recreating

Jenn: 00:21:00

it if you watch something like dances with wolves Something like that.

Jenn: 00:21:03

Like it gives you the very much the feel of that era.

Jenn: 00:21:07

It,

Scott: 00:21:07

it absolutely does.

Scott: 00:21:08

And if you were kind of in that neck of the country where you're kind of venturing

Scott: 00:21:13

up towards Little Bighorn or in the Black Hills, South Dakota, Mount Rushmore area.

Scott: 00:21:19

Yeah.

Scott: 00:21:19

You're coming from Denver.

Scott: 00:21:20

Coming from Denver.

Scott: 00:21:21

Heading up.

Scott: 00:21:22

Yeah.

Scott: 00:21:22

It's, I mean, it's, and, and, you know, by the way, like all this,

Scott: 00:21:26

the speed limits on the freeways out there are like 80 miles an hour.

Scott: 00:21:29

80 miles an hour.

Scott: 00:21:30

Yeah.

Scott: 00:21:31

That, that I've.

Scott: 00:21:32

I guess I should have expected that, but that was just a funny aside.

Scott: 00:21:35

It's like, it's literally 80 and people are doing 85,

Scott: 00:21:38

almost 90 everywhere out there.

Scott: 00:21:40

Cause you're like, the roads are huge.

Scott: 00:21:42

You're just smacking, you're driving through like these vast expanses.

Scott: 00:21:44

It was, it was very interesting.

Scott: 00:21:51

I hope that you've enjoyed our brief journey through the storied past of Fort

Scott: 00:21:56

Laramie, Wyoming and the indelible mark it left on the history of the American West.

Scott: 00:22:03

From the brave pioneers who ventured forth on the Oregon

Scott: 00:22:06

trail to the complex interactions between cultures at Fort Laramie.

Scott: 00:22:11

These narratives remind us that history is not a distant echo, but a living force

Scott: 00:22:17

that continues to shape our present.

Scott: 00:22:20

As we stand in the footsteps of those who came before, we're reminded of

Scott: 00:22:25

the challenges they faced, the bonds they forged, and the decisions they

Scott: 00:22:29

made that resonate across generations.

Scott: 00:22:33

Thank you for listening to the Talk With History podcast, and please reach out

Scott: 00:22:36

to us at our website, talkwithhistory.

Scott: 00:22:38

com, but more importantly, Remember, take a screenshot of your podcast

Scott: 00:22:42

player, send that picture to a friend that you think had played Oregon

Scott: 00:22:46

Trail at one point in time and died of dysentery or broke their leg, or made

Scott: 00:22:54

it to Fort Laramie, which I think you said was the halfway point in the game.

Scott: 00:22:58

We rely on you, our community, to grow and we appreciate