Fort Assinniboine was established in 1879 to protect Montana citizens from attacks by Indian tribes in the region, especially Sioux who had withdrawn across the international boundary after victory over United States troops in the Yellowstone country in 1876. Its first buildings went up so quickly that local Indian people said they rose magically out of the ground. In time, more than 100 buildings costing over a million dollars stood on a 220,000-acre military reserve, with architecture ranging from typical nineteenth century military utility to elegant fortress styling. Troops stationed there were intended to watch the Blackfeet Nation, Gros Ventre, Assiniboine, Sioux (Lakota), Cree, and Métis, deter raiding parties, and guard wagon trains. Soldiers drilled on the parade ground, patrolled the prairies, made brick, and constructed buildings, but they never saw major action. The fort could hold 746 enlisted men and officers, though there were seldom more than 500, and later it housed some of the African-American buffalo soldiers of the Tenth Cavalry. Its abandonment by 1911 shaped northern Montana afterward: demolished buildings supplied brick for Pershing Hall at Northern Montana College, 58,000 acres became part of Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation, another portion became an experimental station for Montana State Agricultural College, much of the land opened to homesteading, and the Beaver Creek area, first designated a federal park, became part of the largest county park in the United States.