Fort McPherson: Buffalo Bill's Prairie Post

In October of eighteen sixty-three, as raids along the Oregon Trail intensified, soldiers established a rough outpost here at Cottonwood Springs beside the Platte River. They called it Cantonment McKean, then Fort Cottonwood, before renaming it in eighteen sixty-six for Union general James B. McPherson, killed in the Atlanta Campaign.

The post sat astride both the emigrant trail and a major north-south Indian crossing of the Platte valley, making it one of the most strategically placed frontier forts on the plains. Most famously, it was home ground for scout William Frederick Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. General George Custer and Pawnee scouts under the North Brothers also operated from here. By eighteen eighty the threat had passed, the railroad had reshaped the land, and the fort closed. Its cemetery still holds soldiers from McPherson and from more than twenty other abandoned frontier posts.