Concern for the safety of westward-bound emigrants became more immediate when news of the Utter party's disastrous confrontation with hostile Indians on September 9 and 10, 1860, reached western settlements. Colonel George Wright, commander of the U.S. Army's District of Oregon, formally recommended the establishment of a military post near the former Hudson's Bay Company Fort Boise, but before the army could act, the United States became embroiled in the Civil War and construction was temporarily delayed. Gold discoveries in the Boise Basin and the Owyhees in the summer of 1862 changed the situation. General Benjamin Alford reported on October 14, 1862, that the need for a military post to protect both white and native peoples had increased tenfold since 1860, and the Governor of Washington, whose territory included all of later Idaho, firmly endorsed the need. Wright, now a general and commander of the Pacific, urged immediate action, and on January 14, 1863, the Secretary of War authorized the new post. Alvord recommended a site about 40 miles up the Boise River from its confluence with the Snake River, and Major Pinckney Lugenbeel left Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory, on June 1 to build it. He arrived on June 28, camped on Government Island in the Boise River, and on the Fourth of July formally located the site for Fort Boise. As his command built the fort, others laid out the new townsite of Boise, now in Idaho Territory. Aside from early settlers' 1863 log cabins preserved as relics, Boise's oldest buildings are those constructed for the fort, including a sandstone quartermaster's building erected in 1864 that is still used by the VA hospital as an office building. On April 5, 1879, the fort was redesignated Boise Barracks. Military units continued serving and protecting the citizens of Boise and southwestern Idaho until the post was formally abandoned in 1913. Soldiers returned briefly in 1916 to prepare for the Mexican border campaign, and again between 1942 and 1944. From 1920 to the present, a veterans hospital has occupied the main part of the grounds and continues to use the buildings.