Established in 1860, Fort Churchill played a key role in the region during the turbulent 1860s as troops helped keep peace between the native Paiute Indians and encroaching white settlement, guarded the Pony Express and telegraph lines, protected California-bound emigrants, settled civil disputes, and performed numerous other duties. Clashes between Indians and whites in 1859 and early 1860, despite Paiute leader Numaga's counsel for peace, led to the fort's establishment, and Captain Joseph Stewart, its first commanding officer, proposed naming the post in honor of Sylvester Churchill, Inspector General of the U.S. Army. By 1869 the reasons for the fort's existence had disappeared and it was abandoned, and after 88 years of exposure to Nevada's harsh elements, Governor Charles H. Russell proclaimed Fort Churchill a Nevada state park in 1957. This area's earliest residents were Native Americans who likely hunted and gathered food along the river's banks, followed by fur trappers by 1830 and California-bound emigrants in the 1840s and 50s. Among them was Samuel Buckland, born in Ohio in 1826, who came west during the Gold Rush, moved to Nevada in 1857, drove 300 head of cattle into the Carson River Valley in 1858, and settled at this site in 1859, where he built a toll bridge and a large log cabin at what became Buckland Station. Over the next 25 years he became a prominent local citizen and rancher, and after Fort Churchill was abandoned he purchased many of its buildings and used the materials to construct the permanent structure known as Buckland Station. Buckland married Eliza Prentice, a 20-year-old California emigrant, on December 6, 1860, and they had nine children, of whom only George, Frank, and Nelson lived to adulthood. Eliza died on January 3, 1884, after a freak accident, Samuel Buckland died on December 28, 1884, and the station then passed through a series of owners and slowly decayed until the Nevada Division of State Parks purchased the property in 1995 and incorporated it into Fort Churchill State Historic Park.