This building served as a barracks at Fort Abercrombie, providing living quarters for enlisted soldiers. The front contained two squad rooms where the soldiers slept, and each room could hold up to 32 men, while the back held the kitchen and dining areas where they ate. In 1868, Assistant Surgeon W.H. Gardner said the barracks was being used to house Indian Scouts. A drawing of Fort Abercrombie from 1862 shows two sets of barracks to the right of the flagpole and officers' quarters to the left, reflecting the typical frontier fort layout in which officers' quarters and enlisted men's barracks faced each other across a central parade ground. The enlisted men at Fort Abercrombie included infantry privates, the lowest-ranking soldiers, who carried equipment for extended campaigns such as a canteen, bayonet, rifled musket, and knapsack with a blanket, food, and extra clothing, and wore a forage cap and sack coat as part of the typical fatigue uniform used from the Civil War until about 1872.