Fort Ellis: Gateway to Yellowstone
Near Bozeman, Montana
Fort Ellis was established on August twenty-seventh, eighteen sixty-seven, two miles east of the young town of Bozeman. It was named for Colonel Augustus Van Horne Ellis, killed at Gettysburg four years earlier. The fort's immediate job was protecting Gallatin Valley settlers after John Bozeman, who blazed the trail that bears his name, was killed in the Yellowstone country that same year.
But Fort Ellis quickly found a second calling. In eighteen seventy, Lieutenant Gustavus Doane and five cavalrymen from the fort escorted a civilian party from Helena into the Yellowstone geysers. Their reports on what they found helped convince Congress to create Yellowstone National Park in eighteen seventy-two, the world's first.
Ellis troopers accompanied further expeditions in eighteen seventy-one and eighteen seventy-five. The fort was decommissioned in eighteen eighty-six, its mission accomplished.
