South central Wyoming long served as a travel corridor for prehistoric and historic peoples. Native American tribes from the Great Basin crossed the area to hunt buffalo on the eastern plains, and from 1810 until the decline of the Rocky Mountain fur trade in the late 1830's, fur traders and trappers passed through on their way west for beaver pelts and returned east with furs. Though they left little evidence, they explored routes later used by thousands of settlers bound for places west of Wyoming. After the outbreak of the Civil War, Congress chose a central transcontinental railroad route through southern Wyoming, and the Union Pacific Railroad built west from Nebraska through Wyoming to Utah. To protect construction crews from attack by hostile Indians, the military built a series of forts along the railroad, including Fort Fred Steele, established in June, 1868 where the railroad crossed the North Platte River and named for Civil War hero Major General Frederick Steele. Until its decommissioning in 1886, the garrison carried out a variety of policing activities involving both Indians and civilians. The railroad also encouraged mercantile growth and the livestock, lumber, and mining industries, and after the military left, these industries continued and the town of Fort Steele survived. Completion of the transcontinental Lincoln Highway through Wyoming in 1922 brought a brief economic revival, but rerouting of the highway in 1939 and the end of the tie industry in 1940 ended the town's role as a commercial center.