Fort Wallace ( 1865–1882) was a

US Cavalry The United States Cavalry, or U.S. Cavalry, was the designation of the mounted force of the United States Army by an act of Congress on 3 August 1861.Price (1883) p. 103, 104 This act converted the U.S. Army's two regiments of dragoons, one ...

fort A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

built in

Wallace County, Kansas Wallace County (standard abbreviation: WA) is a county located in the U.S. state of Kansas. Its county seat is Sharon Springs. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 1,512, making it the second-least populous county in Kansas ( Gre ...

to help defend settlers against

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enroll ...

and

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (; Dakota language, Dakota: Help:IPA, /otʃʰeːtʰi ʃakoːwĩ/) are groups of Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribes and First Nations in Canada, First Nations peoples in North America. The ...

raids. All that remains today is the cemetery, but for a period of over a decade Fort Wallace was one of the most important military outposts on the frontier.

Fort Wallace Museum

Today, Fort Wallace is represented by a privately operated museum nearby in the town of Wallace, with relics from the fort as well as photos, reproduction items, and literature covering the post's history and the settlement of the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

. A casting of the

plesiosaur The Plesiosauria (; Ancient Greek, Greek: πλησίος, ''plesios'', meaning "near to" and Sauria, ''sauros'', meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an Order (biology), order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauro ...

discovered by Turner and Scout William Comstock is also on display. Facades of some of the buildings from Fort Wallace and from the Old Town of Wallace are featured in the Milford Becker Addition opened in 2017.

Location

The old Fort Wallace cemetery still exists, and is located next to the Wallace Township Cemetery at .

References

{{Reflist

External links

Fort tours

Wallace Buildings and structures in Wallace County, Kansas 1865 establishments in Kansas