Protecting the Frontier--TRIP 3 (2012)

Cows come to Dodge city to die.

The Coronado Cross celebrates the first
Christian service held in the U.S.,
not the explorer Coronado.

Outside of town at Cargill, the second largest meat processing plant in the world, smoke poured from the chimneys.
"That's their final walk," said Andy, pointing to a ramp from the parking lot.  A truck ahead of us turned in slowly.
I swallowed hard.
On Route #400 the Coronado Cross stood silhouetted on a hillside. Erected in June of 1975, it commemorated the first mass in the New World North American Territory on St. Peter and St. Paul Day--the first Christian service held on the continent-- by Father Juan de Padilla when Francisco Vasquez de Coronado crossed the Arkansas River from what was Mexico on June 29, 1541. The 38-foot concrete cross was erected in honor of Dodge City's Bicentennial.
A winter wind swept over the hilltop. Temperatures had dropped 30 degrees overnight. It was 48 degrees when we set out this morning, and even with long sleeves and jackets, the cold penetrated.
A few miles north of town, fields of wind turbines spun endlessly, their blades catching the sun with each rotation.  "What I don't understand is how do they determine which ones to use," said Andy. "It's a windy day. Why aren't they running all of them?  I don't understand how they are dispatched for service."

The infantry barracks of Fort Larned
now serves as the Visitor Center.

Fort Larned was a fascinating walk back into the history of the mid-1800's. The fort, built in 1868, only served for 20 years but provided Army protection for the Santa Fe Trail with a battalion of cavalry and three battalions of infantry. Located at a dry bend in the Pawnee River where the river changed course, the fort needed no protective wall. Plains Indians were more likely to attack small groups with raiding parties of warriors than to charge at a stone fort, and the most vulnerable south side contained all the gun placements.  One area to the north that was fortified with an embankment was later torn down because it offered too much cover for attackers.
The history of the fort goes back to the Santa Fe Trail, 1821 to 1880. It carried several million dollars a year in commercial traffic between Independence, Missouri and Santa Fe, then a part of the Mexican Territory. Acquisition of the territory after the war with Mexico and gold rushes of 1849 and 1858 boosted traffic, and the influx of merchants, gold seekers and adventurers disrupted the Indians' way of life. Believing their existence in jeopardy, the tribes struck back, attacking the commerce, mail shipments and travelers on the Trail.

In the barracks soldiers slept head to toe,
four to a set of bunks.



Adjoining the pharmacy is the
hospital operating room.

The hospital pharmacy, stocked
with plenty of potions,
seems well equipped.

To counter the attacks, the Army set up a military post on October 22, 1859, on the bank of the Pawnee River, about five miles from where the Pawnee joins the Arkansas River. At first, it was called Camp Alert because Indian tribes threatened continuously. In June of 1860, the camp was moved farther west, constructed of sod and adobe, and named for Colonel Benjamin F. Larned, the U.S. Army Paymaster-General.  Captain Henry W. Wessells, second infantry, built the set of buildings to protect the Santa Fe Trail. He had planned to use wood and was disappointed when ordered to construct with adobe. Trees were just not readily available.  He wrote, "Most of Fort Larned's buildings were poorly built then and not adequate to withstand the large-scale Indian war that many high-ranking officers predicted."  But that attack never came, and funds for construction were appropriated in 1866.  By winter of 1868, Wessells' "shabby, vermin-breeding" adobe structures were replaced by nine new stone and timber buildings around a parade ground: officers' quarters, barracks for two companies of infantry, soldiers' quarters for cavalry, guardhouse with arsenal and powder magazine, laundress' quarters, hospital, bakery and meat house, housing and shop for blacksmith, carpenter and saddler, and quartermaster's storehouse. The post's only single-family residence was a two-story structure for the commanding officer.  The blockhouse, built in 1864-1865 was a hexagonal building that contained a powder magazine, rifle slits and an underground passageway.  It was converted into a guard house in 1867.  In 1871, a new commissary provided room for a school and library.

The Quartermaster's Commissary carries all the
supplies that soldiers needed, as well as annuities for Indians.

Beginning in 1861, Fort Larned was an annuities distribution point.  This ended in 1868 when the tribes moved to reservations in Indian Territory of Oklahoma.  Annuities were supposed to include staples like bacon, wheat, flour, coffee, sugar, fresh beef and tobacco.  Usually clothing, beads, blankets, metal tools and cooking utensils, gunpowder and lead for bullets was included as well. The system was designed to pacify and transform roaming tribes of warlike Indians into sedentary, peaceful farmers.  But the white man's failure to provide many of the annuities and to treat the tribes with honor destroyed any potential trust the Indians might have developed for the white man. Indian agents like Edward W. Wynkoop and Jesse Leavenworth served the tribes with sincerity, but their efforts were overshadowed by the Army and the government.

With bread baked, it's time for
dinner on the frontier.

For several critical years Fort Larned was the principal guardian of Santa Fe Trail commerce, both the Cimarron branch to the south and the Mountain branch to the north.  The Trail began on the west bank of the Missouri River, first at Franklin, then at Independence, and later at Westport. It led west through Council Grove, past Fort Larned in Kansas to Fort Dodge. There it forked, one route going southwest through the Cimarron desert and the other continuing west into Colorado, turning south at Bent's Fort. Both branches merged just beyond Fort Union, 75 miles from Santa Fe.

Two matching barracks house companies of infantry.
One later served the cavalry and was converted into a hospital. 

In 1864, the War Department forbade travel beyond Fort Larned without armed escort, so the post supplied guard detachments for mail stages and wagon trains. And Fort Larned was the key post in the Indian wars from 1859 to 1869, particularly after 1868 when the Cheyennes violated the Treaty of Medicine Lodge. Cheyennes, Kiowas, Comanches and Arapahos raided from Kansas to Texas. That was when Major General Philip H. Sheridan obtained permission from Washington to organize the winter campaign, ordering Colonel George A. Custer and the 7th Cavalry to thrust south into Indian Territory and attack Black Kettle's Cheyennes along the Washita River on November 27.

Lieutenant Cook and his wife
lived comfortably here with Mother,
who slept in the pullout bed.

Ironically, the last important job at Fort Larned also helped to make the Trail it protected obsolete. As the Santa Fe Railroad pushed west from Topeka and Fort Larned soldiers protected the men who built it, there was no longer a need for the Santa Fe Trail overland. By July of 1878, nearly six years after the railroad was completed through Kansas, the fort was abandoned.
We walked slowly from building to building, going in any door that was open, taking in all the history.

In spite of the frontier fort environment,
most of the officers lived with amenities.

The officers' quarters, assigned by rank rather than number of family members present, seemed comfortable and nicely furnished, as we browsed from one room to another. We read that many officers resented Lieutenant Cook because he lived so well, far above the $70 a month earned by an officer of his rank. He had married well. His two rooms in the officers' quarters might have served comfortably except that his mother lived with the couple for a time. She had a pull-out bed under theirs in the bedroom. I guess some people tolerate almost anything for money. Lieutenant Thompson, across the foyer, was bitten in the leg by a rabid wolf that ran around the post until it was shot. Thompson lived to tell the story, amazingly enough.

More than 60 soldiers and many unknown lie buried here on
the frontier. Graves with wood slats are all unidentified.

As in the other frontier forts, the biggest problem was boredom. Andy read that a gallon of whiskey cost $1.50 and a gallon of beer was $1.00. That was the cheap way to keep warm in this land of howling winds.  Blankets were $11 to $15 each.
One captain wrote to government supervisors, begging that men serving here be issued flannel shirts and white pants to replace their wool uniforms in the summertime when temperatures soared over 100 degrees on the treeless plains.  His request was rejected and denied.
Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. The history was fascinating.

Eight to ten bison munched
peacefully in a park in Hays, Kansas.

For snack we stopped at a picnic table in Burdett, Kansas, the boyhood home of Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered and named Pluto, identified 775 asteroids and examined more than 90 million star images. Born in Illinois, he ended his career as a professor at New Mexico State University.  We only ended up in Burdett because we took a wrong turn in the middle of nowhere.
Hays didn't have much to offer either. We located Boot Hill cemetery, only a statue on the corner; the old Rome town site marker, a cement pillar outside of town; and Frontier Park, a small herd of American bison who kept their tails turned toward us for a half hour.