Fort Fred Steele, Guardian of the Iron Road

Fort Fred Steele was planted on the west bank of the North Platte River in the summer of eighteen sixty-eight, to protect the workers driving the Union Pacific Railroad across southern Wyoming. The post was named for Major General Frederick Steele, a Civil War hero. What began as a tent camp quickly grew into a substantial installation with barracks, officers' quarters, a sawmill, a blacksmith, and a sutler's store.

Cattlemen, sheepherders, loggers, and merchants followed the soldiers, and a civilian community formed around the fort. It served its railroad mission and then outlived it, becoming an economic anchor for Carbon County through the eighteen seventies. The Army abandoned the post in eighteen eighty-six, turning it over to the Interior Department.

The ruins are preserved today as a Wyoming state historic site.