At the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, a place known to the Dakota as Bdote, meaning "where two waters come together," people gathered for ceremony for over 10,000 years. The area holds many ceremonial and historic sites important to the Dakota and other Native American groups, who came here to trade, communicate, and cooperate for generations. Beginning in the 1820s, the United States Army built a post here to protect government interests as the country expanded west. The first section of the fort, now known as Historic Fort Snelling, served as a frontier outpost until 1858 and was recommissioned in 1861 at the start of the Civil War. The surrounding historic buildings were constructed for Fort Snelling's Upper Post, many in the late nineteenth century, with additional buildings added through the 1930s as the fort expanded and changed. The Upper Post became the fort's central hub, providing residential, administrative, medical, and recreational facilities. Fort Snelling once covered a much wider area, including land now occupied by highways and an airport, as well as playing fields, a golf course, and buildings west of Bloomington Road used by the Quartermaster and the Army's artillery and cavalry units. After World War II, Fort Snelling was decommissioned, and the Upper Post was used by the Veteran's Administration and several reserve units until the 1970s, when the land was transferred to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
