Fort Caspar’s buildings were reconstructed on the original site in 1936 by the Works Progress Administration, a government program created during the Great Depression to provide jobs for the unemployed. Before his death on July 26, 1885, Lt. Caspar W. Collins made several diagrams of military posts in Dakota Territory, and this reconstruction was based on his diagram of the fort. In November 1865, the post known as Platte Bridge Station was officially renamed Fort Caspar in honor of Lt. Collins. The site includes a sutler store built in 1862 by a civilian trader under army contract; a blacksmith shop and corral built in 1859 to serve the Overland Stage Company, Pony Express, emigrants, and the army; living quarters, stable, and corral built in 1859 by the Overland Stage Company and later used by the Pony Express as a relay station in 1860-61 before the army adapted them in 1862 into officers’ quarters, a laundry room, and stables; a commissary built in 1862 for army clothing, equipment, and foodstuff; barracks and kitchen used by cavalry and infantry troops beginning in 1862; a telegraph office in a building erected in 1859 as the Guinard trading post and converted in 1861 by the Pacific Telegraph into an office and storeroom; Gurnard Bridge, built in 1859 by Louis Gurnard and used until Fort Caspar was abandoned in 1867; the Mormon Ferry, first built in 1847 when the Mormon Pioneer Party crossed the river here; a carriage shed that houses the museum’s wagon collection and stores large artifacts; a commemorative cemetery with white markers representing some of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry soldiers who died while serving in the West; and a monument and cemetery, including a Grand Army of the Republic monument at the site of several military and civilian burials.