Fort Duchesne: Buffalo Soldiers on the Uinta

Fort Duchesne was established in August of eighteen eighty-six on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in the Uinta Basin of northeastern Utah. Its original mission was to keep the peace on a reservation that had recently absorbed Ute bands removed from Colorado after the eighteen seventy-nine Meeker Incident. The fort is particularly remembered as a post where the Ninth Cavalry, one of the African American Buffalo Soldier regiments, served in the eighteen nineties.

The soldiers were stationed here during a period of significant tension over reservation allotment policies. The Army abandoned Fort Duchesne in nineteen twelve, and the site was transferred to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The town that grew up around the old fort remains within the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, home to the Ute Indian Tribe, which today operates substantial oil and gas operations in the Uinta Basin.