Fort Phil Kearny

Fort Phil Kearny was an outpost of the United States Army that existed in the late 1860s in present-day northeastern Wyoming along the Bozeman Trail. Construction began in 1866 on Friday, July 13, by Companies A, C, E, and H of the 2nd Battalion, 18th Infantry, under the direction of the regimental commander and Mountain District commander Colonel Henry B. Carrington.

The post was named for Major General Philip Kearny (1815–1862), a popular figure in the Civil War. The fort should be distinguished from the similarly named Fort Kearny in Nebraska, which was named for his uncle, Stephen Kearny (1794–1848). Today, the fort and the nearby Fetterman and Wagon Box battle sites are maintained by the State of Wyoming as the Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site.

The fort was located along the east side of the Bighorn Mountains in present-day northern Johnson County, approximately fifteen miles (24 km) north of Buffalo. Along with Fort Reno and Fort C. F. Smith, the fort was established along the Bozeman Trail in the Powder River Country at the height of the Indian Wars to protect prospective miners traveling the trail north from the Oregon Trail to present-day Montana.

At an elevation of 4,700 feet (1,430 m) above sea level, Fort Phil Kearny was the largest of the three stockaded fortifications along the trail. Its eight-foot-high (2.4 m) log walls enclosed an area of 17 acres (6.9 ha). The longer walls on the northeast and southwest sides each measured 1,496 feet (456 m) in length; the width of the northwest side was 600 feet (180 m) and this tapered to 240 feet (73 m) at the southeast side. The perimeter of the stockade was approximately 3,900 feet (1,190 m), and its construction took more than four thousand logs. Further building construction in 1867 required over 606,000 board feet of lumber and 130,000 adobe bricks.

The fort was under continuous construction and was nearing completion in December 1866, when its garrison was due to be re-designated the 27th Infantry. At its peak strength, the garrison numbered 400 troops and 150 civilians: 9 officers, a surgeon, and 329 enlisted men of five infantry companies of the 18th/27th Infantry, including the newly recruited Company K, 27th; one officer and 60 men of Company C, 2nd Cavalry, and 150 civilian quartermaster and contractor employees.

Text adapted from “Fort Phil Kearny” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Fort Phil Kearny ranks #1,969 of 7,738 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #36 of the 105 mapped in United States. Founded 1866, it is older than 7% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 562 atlas entries founded in the 19th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 3,181 times in the last 60 days, more than 76% of the atlas. See how United States compares in the castle statistics.

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