The immense stone barracks was the most impressive building at Fort Ridgely. Measuring 235 feet by 40 feet and two stories high, it could house as many as 400 enlisted men. Its two-foot-thick walls were made of rectangular granite blocks set in mortar. When settlers poured into the fort seeking protection during the 1862 U.S.-Dakota Conflict, they were housed in this building. Here soldiers fired through the rear windows at Dakota warriors emerging from the northeast ravine.