Fort Ransom operated from 1867 to 1872 as one of several small military outposts established by General Alfred H. Terry to place troops at strategic points along frontier transportation routes as a defense against Indian attack. Its site offered broad views across the prairie, a natural spring for water, prairie grasses for livestock, and timber from the Sheyenne River. By 1872, its soldiers were continually in the field protecting railroad crews, and when the railroad reached Jamestown that year, the post was abandoned and moved to the newly established Fort Cross, later called Fort Seward. Major Crossman, who was charged with building and occupying the post, recalled a dangerous prairie fire in the fall of 1867 that nearly struck the camp, severe winters that cut the garrison off from the outside world except for weekly mail carried on snowshoes by Indians from Abercrombie, and summer mosquitoes so overwhelming that they made life a burden. Fort Ransom was named for Brevet Major General Thomas Edward Greenfield Ransom, and after the U.S. Army abandoned it, local settlers salvaged its lumber, bricks, and cut stone; stones taken from the post were later used in the foundation of the Ransom County Museum building. During the fort’s brief five-year existence, five soldiers died of natural causes and two Indian mail carriers froze to death on the trail.