Four Days From Fort Snelling

On April 26, 1853, the steamer West Newton left St. Paul carrying the first soldiers to the site of the new post at Fort Ridgely, a journey from Fort Snelling that took four days along a river so serpentine that passenger and editor John P. Owens joked he expected to find it tied up in a double bow knot. He also observed the crowded conditions aboard, with soldiers, their wives, stores, equipment, cattle, and dogs huddled together and strewn about the boat. After arriving, the soldiers and some hired civilians cleared the land, milled wood, and quarried stone for the fort's buildings. Although the original plan called for all the buildings to be made of local granite, time and cost meant that only the barracks and the commissary were built of granite, while the rest were made of wood, using granite boulders found on the prairie as foundation stones.

Minnesota · United States