Established as Camp Halleck by Captain S.P. Smith on July 26, 1867, it protected the California Emigrant Tail and construction work on the Central Pacific Railroad. The camp was named for Major General Henry Wager Halleck, then commander of the Military Division of the Pacific. In May 1868, it became headquarters for the Nevada Military District after Fort Churchill was abandoned, and on April 5, 1879, it became Fort Halleck. A nine square mile reservation was set aside on October 11, 1881. The fort was a two-company post with about twenty buildings of wood, adobe, and stone arranged around a rectangular parade ground. Its troops took no part in local Indian troubles, but they fought the Modoc Indians of northern California in February 1873, the Nez Perce uprising in Idaho in 1877, the Bannocks in Oregon in 1878, and the Apaches in Arizona in 1883. The fort closed on December 1, 1886.