Fort Morgan, Colorado: Iliff

Sunday, December 17, 2017

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?

Historic Overview

From my youth I brought with me only a vague impression of the history of the small town in which I was raised. Fort Morgan, Colorado, built on the site of a short-lived military fort in the heart of the great American desert; a fort that had never been attacked, never seen a battle. On little more than a whim I went in search of the fort’s operational dates (1864-1868), expecting this information would come readily to hand and that would end my curiosity - the fort once again fading into the midst of vague memory. To my surprise, I instead found a door opening to the history of the west.

The history of Fort Morgan will never rival that of Denver or glisten with the same gold dust of the mountain mining towns, but this little town on the plains of Colorado was central to the story of the Romantic west; it's story connecting with the major events of the age. Everyone has a history and every place is central to a story. What follows is the story from the land - of the land - on which Fort Morgan would rise.