Fort Caspar and the Misspelling That Named a City
Near Casper, Wyoming
After the Battle of Platte Bridge, the Army renamed the post Fort Caspar, spelled C-A-S-P-A-R, in honor of the lieutenant who had died there. The spelling was deliberate. There was already a fort in Colorado named for Collins's father, General William O. Collins, and the Army wanted to distinguish the two. So they named the post for the lieutenant's given name, Caspar, rather than the family surname.
The fort itself did not last long. The Army abandoned Fort Caspar in eighteen sixty-seven and moved its garrison to Fort Fetterman. The Union Pacific's transcontinental line, built to the south, soon carried the westward traffic. The buildings were left to deteriorate. Within a few years almost nothing remained.
Then came the railroad, not the Union Pacific but a branch line, the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad, pushing west from Nebraska in eighteen eighty-eight. The town that platted itself around the new depot took the name of the old fort. But somewhere in the paperwork, the spelling shifted. The fort was Caspar. The town became Casper. One letter off, and it has been that way ever since.
In nineteen thirty-six, as a Works Progress Administration project, workers reconstructed the fort buildings using the original spelling, Fort Caspar, to honor Collins's name correctly. The city next door kept the error. It does to this day.
The reconstructed fort now operates as a museum and sits beside the North Platte at the location of Guinard's old bridge, essentially the same ground where the ferry operated in eighteen forty-seven. The geography has not changed. The spellings have not been reconciled.
