As settlement increased in the West during the 1850s and 1860s, the U.S. Army built and maintained frontier forts, usually on major transportation routes, amid conflicts between trail traffic and railroad expansion and native people who had lived here for hundreds of years. These forts were established to protect settlers and enforce treaties made with native tribes. On this site, the U.S. Army operated Fort Hays from 1867 to 1889. In addition to protecting railroads and settlers, it served as a military supply depot for forts south and west of here. The total military reservation included 7,640 acres, while the fort itself consisted of 45 major buildings on 65 acres. People who lived there during its active years reacted differently to its facilities and the surrounding plains environment, with one observer in 1868 calling it the cleanest and loveliest post he had ever seen, and another in 1870 likening a military fort on the plains to a ship at sea, marked by isolation within and desolation without. For much of its history, Fort Hays was an active and busy outpost where both infantry and cavalry were stationed, and garrison strength varied from approximately 560 soldiers in 1867 to 17 in 1879. As native people relocated to Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, the need for the fort's protection decreased, and as part of a move to consolidate western outposts, the army abandoned Fort Hays in November 1889.