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Show Old Fort Laramie Is Proclaimed National Monument Old Fort Laramie, in Wyoming, army general headquarters during the Indian wars on the plains and long-time capital of the wilderness west of the Missouri river, has been proclaimed a national monument. The score of crumbling buildings that still mark its site at the junction junc-tion of the Laramie and North Platte rivers are to be preserved and restored as a memorial to the dauntless traders and soldiers who maintained this greatest of all refuges ref-uges along the covered-wagon trail by means of which the West was won. The first known white men to visit the site were members of the Stuart party of Astorians in the winter of 1812-13. Later it was a fur-trading post. In 1S49 the United States army purchased Fort Laramie in order to establish authority over the streams of emigrants who were passing through the fort en route to California. By 1SG5 the Indian situation situ-ation became so troublesome that Fort Laramie was made general headquarters of "the military district dis-trict of the plains." When the arteries of transconti nental commerce shifted to the south and the Indians were subdued and either confined to reservations or transported to other parts of the country, Fort Laramie languished, and in 1886 its abandonment was recommended. The last troops marched out of the old fort in 1889 and the military reservation was restored to the public domain the following year. Although half a century has passed since the Stars and Stripes waved over the historic old fort, since which time the place has been in the hands of various private owners, own-ers, many of the stout old buildings still stand, including a part of original origi-nal Fort John and "Bedlam," the bachelor officers' quarters erected in 1852. Together with Scotts Bluff National Nation-al monument, located 60 miles to the east, Fort Laramie preserves two of the most famous landmarks on the Oregon trail, the Mormon trail, the Overland trail, the route of the Pony Express, the Ovi-rland stage and the first transcontinental telegraph line. |