Established in 1868 during General Phillip H. Sheridan's winter campaign against Indians in Texas and the Indian Territory, the Fort Dodge - Camp Supply Military Road was an ungraded prairie trail about 90 miles long that carried supplies from Fort Dodge and Dodge City to Camp Supply, later Fort Supply, in present Oklahoma, and formed an important communications link among western outposts. In the 1870s and 1880s it also served as a branch of the Western Trail for cattle driven from Texas to Dodge City and beyond. In the 1880s a government telegraph line was erected along the trail, and in Clark County two 50-foot-square fortifications called redoubts housed cavalry patrols assigned to keep the mail and supply route open. The present road between Bloom and Ashland follows this route.