Construction of Fort Steuben was completed in 1787 by Captain John Francis Hamtramck and soldiers of the 1st American Regiment, who had been sent to the frontier by the United States government to remove illegal squatters and protect government surveyors from American Indian raids as the surveyors platted the First Seven Ranges of the Northwest Territory. The surveyed land was sold for settlement or offered to soldiers as payment for military service during the Revolutionary War, and settlement of the Northwest Territory consequently led to the formation of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Fort Steuben was named for Baron Frederich Wilhelm Augustus Steuben, who had served in the Revolutionary War and from whom the town also took its name. Captain Hamtramck abandoned the fort in 1787 by order of Colonel Josiah Harmar, and by 1790 its remains had disappeared.
