Fort Stevenson on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Fort Stevenson was a frontier military fort in the 19th century in what was then 
Dakota Territory
The Territory of Dakota was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 2, 1861, until November 2, 1889, when the final extent of the reduced territory was split and admitted to the Union as the states of N ...
and what is now North Dakota
North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, So ...
. The fort was named for Thomas G. Stevenson
Thomas Greely Stevenson (February 3, 1836 – May 10, 1864) was a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He was killed in action during the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse.
Biography
Stevenson was born in Boston, Massachusett ...
, a Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
general who was killed in the Battle of Spotsylvania
The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, sometimes more simply referred to as the Battle of Spotsylvania (or the 19th-century spelling Spottsylvania), was the second major battle in Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's 186 ...
. It was built in 1867 and abandoned in 1883.
Life at the fort features heavily in the memoir of Régis de Trobriand
Philippe Régis Denis de Keredern de Trobriand (June 4, 1816 – July 15, 1897) was a French aristocrat, lawyer, poet, and novelist who, on a dare, emigrated in his 20s to the United States, settling first in New York City. During the American ...
, the commander of the fort. He describes interactions with the Mandan
The Mandan are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still re ...
, Hidatsa
The Hidatsa are a Siouan people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a parent ...
, and Arikara
Arikara (), also known as Sahnish,
''Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.'' (Retrieved Sep 29, 2011)
tribes, and their hostilities with another group of tribes, the Sioux.
The fort was abandoned in 1883 with the sale of all buildings and property. In 1901 the lands encompassing the Fort Stevenson Military Reservation were sold to Black and Associates, a group of eastern businessmen. The group originally planned to raise sugar beets on the acreages but instead dropped those plans and sold off much of the land to adjacent landowners. Several buildings remained on the site until the 1940s. The location was inundated by the rising waters of Garrison Reservoir, later renamed ''Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.'' (Retrieved Sep 29, 2011)
Lake Sakakawea
Lake Sakakawea is a large reservoir in the north central United States, impounded in 1953 by Garrison Dam, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dam located in the Missouri River basin in central North Dakota. Named for the Shoshone-Hidatsa woman Sa ...
, in the late 1950s and today is under about 120 feet of water. The site was located about nine miles southwest of the city of Garrison, ND.
Fort Stevenson State Park, located on the shores of Lake Sakakawea about 4 miles from the original fort's location, includes a replica of the fort's guardhouse, constructed in 2003, which serves as a museum and information center relating to the old military installation.
References
{{coord, 47, 34, 02, N, 101, 25, 50, W, format=dms, display=title, type:landmark_region:US-ND Stevenson Pre-statehood history of North Dakota