1865 marked the beginning of regular travel over Butterfield’s Overland Despatch (B.O.D.) along the desolate Smoky Hill Trail through the center of Kansas to Denver City, Colo.

The route cut like a knife through the sacred hunting grounds of all the plains tribes. Therefore, the federal government established military posts to protect freight and stage travel along the route. The B.O.D. established stations every nine to 15 miles, depending upon the availability of water and defensive positioning of the location.

In far western Kansas, Pond’s Creek Station was established near the confluence of Pond’s Creek with the Smoky Hill River. The Colorado border was 23 miles to the west. David Butterfield passed over the line on the first coach to Denver, leaving Atchison Sept. 11, 1865, and arriving in Denver on Sept. 23.

Also in September, Capt. Dewitt C. McMichael led Company A, of the 13th Missouri Volunteer Cavalry to Pond’s Creek. Forty-two troopers established Camp Pond Creek west of the confluence on the grass covered bluffs overlooking the south fork of the Smoky Hill Trail, (southwest of presentday Wallace, Kan.)

The banks were perfectly suited to provide quick dugout shelter. Soon the soldiers of Camp Pond Creek assumed their military role of providing protection for the B.O.D.

Company I of the 1st U. S. Volunteer Infantry, under Capt. Richard Musgrove, arrived at Camp Pond Creek on Dec. 2, 1865. The 1st Infantry had been organized from Confederate prisoners of war, “Galvanized Yankees; who enrolled to serve in the west.

With winter rapidly setting, the 1st immediately began digging dugout quarters to shelter 50 men. The underground shelters were warm and relatively comfortable when the snow began to pile up. All traffic was brought to a standstill on the Smoky Hill Trail, including wagon trains scheduled to bring supplies to the isolated post. Capt. McMichael ordered an evacuation of the camp on Jan. 18, 1866.

By late February winter weather warmed and the Galvanized Yankees prepared to return to Pond Creek. Company H, 2nd U. S. Cavalry under the command of Capt. Edward Ball arrived on March 8, 1866.

Ball reported that the commissary had been nearly completed, and enough lumber was available to build storehouses. Capt. Ball recommended the construction of company barracks, a mess room and kitchen, stables, officer’s quarters and kitchen, guardhouse, and a combined blacksmith, carpenter, wheelwright shop.

Under General Orders No. 50, issued April 18, 1866, the post was renamed Fort Wallace after Gen. William Harvey Lamb Wallace, who died from wounds received at the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, in 1862. Capt. James J. Gordon took command with the arrival of Company B., 6th U. S. Volunteer Infantry.

Commanding officers changed often, with 1st Lt. Alfred Elliot Bates, 2nd U. S. Cavalry commanding in May. The Pond Creek location did not offer an open location adequate to construct a formal military post, therefore Bates relocated Fort Wallace two miles to the east on the north bank of the Smoky Hill River. Civilian workers were employed to cut stone from a nearby quarry to begin construction of officer’s quarters, and stables.

Fort Wallace witnessed a long line of officers who passed through the post. On Oct. 8, 1866, the arrival of 2nd Lt. Frederick H. Beecher marked one of the most significant tours of duty by any officer associated with Fort Wallace. As acting assistant quartermaster, Beecher was charged with the responsibility of designing and constructing the post. In November, Capt. Miles Keogh, Company I, 7th U. S. Cavalry assumed command and with Beecher helped shape Fort Wallace into “one of the finest looking posts west of Fort Riley:

The post would ultimately accommodate 500 troops, but its presence in the heart of Indian country only served to represent invasion to the native tribes. Twenty-three miles to the west on the Colorado border, Butterfield’s Overland Despatch had established Blue Mound stage station in the middle of the sacred Big Timbers of the Smoky Hill River.

From a distance the grand cottonwood trees that shaded the wide river valley gave the appearance of dark hill rising from the valley floor. “Blue Mound” was certainly an inspiring vista to behold on the vast treeless prairies of the great plains. Unfortunately, Fort Wallace contractors saw only easily procured lumber and firewood.

Frontiersman “Uncle Dick Wooten recalled in a memoir that when they found their old campground with scarcely a tree standing, they, “put on their war paint and declared that for every tree the white man had cut down, they would kill a white man ....

And that was so, for in a few short years the post came to be known as “The Fightingest Fort in the West:’ Inevitably the clash of two wildly divergent cultures changed the course of history on The Way West.

“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is author of the book Desperate Seed: Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier, Ellsworth, KS. Contact Kansas Cowboy, 220 21st Road, Geneseo, Kan. Phone: (785)531-2058 or kansascowboy@kans.com.