Fort Laramie, at the junction of the Laramie and North Platte rivers in eastern Wyoming, became one of the most important crossroads of the nineteenth-century American West. Established in 1834 as the fur-trade post Fort William, it later became Fort John before the U.S. Army bought it in June 1849 as overland migration surged. At a key split in routes toward Oregon, Utah, and California, emigrants stopped there to rest, repair, trade, and prepare for the journey ahead. It also became a major army post and treaty site, where commerce, migration, diplomacy, and later conflict converged on the frontier.