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Fort Laramie

For 56 years, the epic story of America’s western expansion played out on a grand scale at a point in eastern Wyoming where the North Platte and Laramie Rivers meet. Here, Indians, trappers, traders, missionaries, emigrants, gold seekers, soldiers, cowboys and homesteaders would each leave their mark on a place that would become famous in the annals of the American West. That place was Fort Laramie.

Fort Laramie was truly the “crossroads of a nation moving west”. It was first established in 1834 as a small private fur trading post. A few years later, it became an important weigh station for thousands of emigrants who would travel the Oregon, California and Mormon trails. Purchased by the government in 1849, it rapidly grew to become the largest and most important military post on the Northern Plains.