Ed Chase: Gambling King at Fort Morgan

Edward Chase.

Edward Chase, Denver’s gambling king had a short history with the military and Junction Station as Fort Morgan was at the time and the Sand Creek Massacre. In August 1864, he volunteered with Company F of the 3^rd Colorado Cavalry. The men in the militia were called “100 day’s men” because their enlistment in the militia lasted for 100 days. 

Execution of Foster & Stone - 13th Missouri Cavalry

During the 1860s when Fort Wardwell [Fort Morgan] was the most active at fighting the allied tribes, the fort earned some unwelcome notoriety. On January 8, 1866, two soldiers from the 13^th Missouri Cavalry stationed at Camp Wardwell were arrested for the murders of Isaac H. Augustus and F. H. Sluman, freighters working for Carney & Stevens out of Leavenworth, Kansas.

Privates Frank Foster and Henry Stone of Company E, 13^th Missouri Cavalry were arrested for the murders and brought to Denver for trial. The soldiers were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The details of the murders were reported as part of Franklin Foster’s confession reported in the newspaper on May 17^th:

Fort Morgan Burns: Hostilities Continue

On May 18, 1868, the flag was lowered for the last time at Fort Morgan and the cannon fired a last salute. Captain Powell and the 4th U. S. Infantry marched to Fort Laramie which would become the unit's home base. The fort lay amongst buffalo and buffalo grass and waited; the sod fort melting back into the plains.

Just months after Fort Morgan was abandoned, Indians attacked Brush’s ranch, killing William Brush, his cousin Jared Conroy and a hired man Halstead Olson Dunning and stampeding stock. With the fort deserted, the ranchers were on their own just as they had been in the early 1860s at the start of the Indian hostilities in the area. 

Did the military leave too soon? 

Artist Thomas Worthington Whittredge at Fort Morgan

In 1866, General John Pope, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri which then included the Colorado Territory, set off on a tour of the Plains, the Rocky Mountains and New Mexico. During his trip he would stay at Fort Wardwell on June 22nd through the 24th. The expedition was recorded by Colonel James Meline in his book Two Thousand Miles on Horseback. Meline wrote eloquently about the fort (see post "In View of the Mountains").

Also accompanying General Pope on this expedition was the landscape painter Thomas Worthington Whittredge. He was as enthralled as Meline with the plains and a number of his landscapes are set along the Platte River.