Camp Grant and the Bald Hills War

In October eighteen sixty-three, the U.S. Army established Camp Grant on the Eel River, three miles east of where Bull Creek joins the South Fork, as a base of operations during the Bald Hills War. The garrison was drawn from the First Battalion of Mountaineers, California Volunteers, commanded by Captain John Y. Simpson.

The Bald Hills War was the Army's campaign to remove the Wailaki and neighboring peoples from the interior mountains of what is now southern Humboldt County, where they had resisted settler encroachment after the Gold Rush brought a flood of miners and ranchers into their territory. In eighteen sixty-four Simpson's company engaged in several skirmishes and captured one hundred sixty-six Native Americans, who were sent to the Round Valley Reservation. When the campaign ended in August eighteen sixty-four, the need for Camp Grant ended with it. The garrison mustered out at Fort Humboldt in June eighteen sixty-five and the post was abandoned.