Camp Poplar River
Montana
On October twelfth, eighteen eighty, Companies B and F of the Eleventh Infantry arrived here from Fort Custer and established Camp Poplar River, a two-company post on the south bank of the Poplar River just north of the Fort Peck Agency. The Army's mission was blunt: keep non-agency Sioux and Assiniboine from leaving reservation boundaries and help capture anyone who resisted the confinement policy. The camp sat half a mile north of the agency buildings and drew many Sioux who had fled after the Little Bighorn in eighteen seventy-six and were now settling near the Missouri River.
The post was never large, never famous, never promoted to a full fort. It operated until around eighteen ninety-three, when the Army decided its work here was done. The Fort Peck Agency remained and grew into the town of Poplar.
The camp itself disappeared, leaving only its story in the ground.
