These ruins are all that remain of a large stone house built in 1861 by Joseph R. Brown, a frontier fur trader, Indian agent, politician, journalist, and inventor. Known as Farther and Gay Castle, the house was a center of hospitality and happy family life for the short time that Brown, his mixed-blood Sioux wife, and their twelve children lived there. On August 19, 1862, during the Sioux Uprising, the Browns were forced to flee their home, which was looted and burned by the attacking Indians.