On July 17, 1832, General Henry Atkinson wrote to General Winfield Scott that a stockade work flanked by four block houses had been built here to secure supplies and accommodate the sick. Atkinson, with more than 4000 frontier soldiers, had followed Black Hawk up the Rock River in an effort to end the Black Hawk War. After an unproductive sortie east up Bark River, he returned and built Fort Koshkonong, later known as Fort Atkinson. Constructed of oak logs eight feet tall, the fort was abandoned after the army pursued and defeated Black Hawk at the Battle of Bad Axe in August 1832, ending the Sauk's last hard fight against continued encroachment of white men onto their tribal lands. In September 1836, Dwight Foster arrived and erected the first cabin in what is now Fort Atkinson on this site. He and other settlers used logs from the stockade to build cabins, river rafts and firewood, and by 1840 little of the fort remained.