Accordingly in 1846 Colonel Kearny with a detachment of troops proceeded up the Missouri from Fort Leavenworth and laid out the site of the fort and made arrangements for its construction. A two-story blockhouse was completed before the Army apparently realized that the location was ill-chosen for its purpose, because at that date very few emigrants passed that point. The name Camp Kearny was applied to the post and somewhat later it was called Fort Kearny. No further construction was carried on except for the erection of a number of log huts for temporary quarters for a battalion of troops who wintered there in 1847-48 preliminary to their departure for the Platte where a new post was established along the Oregon Trail route.
On September 23, 1847, topographical engineer Lt. Daniel P. Woodbury left Fort Kearny at Table Creek with about seventy men, under orders to select a site for a military post at a suitable location along the Platte River. After examining the country, Lieutenant Woodbury chose a site described in his official report as follows:
I have located the post opposite a group of wooded islands in the
Platte River . . . three hundred seventeen miles from Independence,
Missouri, one hundred seventeen miles from Fort Kearny on the Missouri
and three miles from the head of the group of islands called Grand Isalnd.
By Christmas of 1847, Lt. Woodbury was in Washington, D.C., on orders from the battalion commander Col. L. E. Powell to secure organization of the new post. In a series of of communiques to General Totten, chief engineer, he requested an appropriation of $15,000 for materials and labor, advocating the employment of Mormon farmers at Council Bluffs to supply the new post and urging the transfer of a large stockpile of lumber and millwork from Fort Kearny. Although he failed to attain all of these objectives, Woodbury did secure orders to construct a fort which was to built "from scratch", using local materials and "volunteer" soldier labor.In the spring of 1848 construction began at the Platte River post. Col. Powell and Lt. Woodbury marched out of Fort Kearny at Table Creek with an advance guard. By May 1, Table Creek was abandoned, and by June all officers and men of the Missouri volunteers had arrived at the "head of Grand Island" to erect the "first military station on the route to Oregon".
Lieutenant Woodbury put all available troops to work, having at one time 175 men employed in brick making, moulding adobes, getting out timber, working at the sawmill, carpentering, and cutting and laying sod. The fort was laid out in a regular square, the buildings surrounding a parade ground four acres in extent with a flagstaff erected in the center. Around the parade ground were planted a number of cottonwood trees.
Lt. Daniel P. Woodbury had given the name Fort Childs, in honor of Col. Thomas Childs of Mexican War fame (and Woodbury's father-in-law), to the new post and headed his reports accordingly. But a general order from the War Department under date of December 30, 1848 stipulated that "the new post established at Grand Island, Platte River, will be known as Fort Kearny." Thus, name of the illustrious soldier, Stephan W. Kearny, was Transferred to the Platte River post.
Fort Kearny rapidly developed into one of the most important stops on the Oregon Trail. On June 2, 1849 Lieutenant Woodbury wrote:
Four thousand four hundred wagons have already passed by this post -nearly all destined for California. There are four men and ten draft animals to each wagon-very nearly. Many, not included above, have traveled on the other side of the Platte and many more are still to come on this side. The post is at present very poorly prepared to give to the emigrants the assistance which very many have required even at this point so near the beginning of their journey.As the fort grew in the years following, better facilites were developed for the benefit of the overland travelers. Large stroes were accumulated, primarily for the supply of the posts farther west, but the commanding officer at Fort Kearny was authorized to sell suppiles at cost to emigrants needing them. Often, it seems, stores were given outright in emergencies to indigent travlers. In 1850, through the medium of a stage coach run between Independence, Missouri and Salt Lake City, Fort Kearny acquired a regular once a month mail and passenger service. For the first time the emigrants could trust their letters to a scheduled plan and not have to depend on an Army courier or some fellow emigrants. This service to the great overland emigration was one of the most important functions that Fort Kearny performed. The post served also as an important stop on the Pony Express route in 1860-61.
As the great overland migration flowed through and past Fort Kearny many a travler wrote a description of the fort. One of these was a correspondent for the New York Herald (perhaps Capt. Jesse A. Grove) who passed through in 1857 and 1858 as a member of the Utah Expedition. He wrote a detailed description of the physical features of the frontier post:
Fort Kearny, like most of the forts in the West, has no fortifications but is merely a station for troops. It stands on a slight elevation a few miles from the Platte River. The fort consists of five unpainted wooden houses, two dozen long, low mud [sod or adobe] buildings. The houses are built around a large open square or parade ground, while the mud buildings extend in any and every direction out from the roads that run along the sides of this square. Trees have been set out along the borders of the parade ground, and they are the only bushes that can be seen in any direction except a few straggling ones on the banks of the Platte a few miles distant. Intermixed between these immature trees on the sides of the square are sixteen blockhouse guns, two field pieces, two mountain howitzers and one prairie piece. These constitute the artillery defences of the post against the Indians. On the west side of the parade ground stands the house of the com- manding officer. It is a large, ill-shaped, unpainted structure, two stories high, with piazzas along its entire front on both floors. Within , however, the building is much more respectable being commodious, comfortable, well finished and neatly finished. Directly opposite the commanding offi- cer's house, on the other side of the square, is the soldier's barracks, seventy feet by thrity feet, and two stories high. The barracks has never been finished and now is in bad order. It can accommodate very well eighty-four men. There are in it now between ninety and one hundred men. The other wooden buildings are the officers' quarters, the hospital and the sutler's store. These structures do not present a very inviting appearance to the eye, but they are charming places compard to the spectacle of twenty-four long, winding, broken-backed, falling down mud buildings. These are of all sizes, the largest one being about one hundred forty feet long, forty feet wide and twelve feet high. (The Utah Expedition, 1857-1858, New Hampshire Historical Society Collections, Vol. 12, p. 233.)Ten years later, the appearance of Fort Kearny had changed greatly, and for the better, according to the report of Acting Assistant Surgeon General W. H. Bradley in 1869. The large sod and adobe buildings, except the post bakery, were gone, having been replaced by resonably adquate frame structures. The older fram buildings were reported in good repair with exception of the hospital, which is described as being old and dilapidated, and generally unfit for its purpose. This report of Surgeon Bradley presents a picture of the historic fort less than two years before its abandonment as a military post.
Although in the heart of the Indian Country and exposed to great potential danger from any hostile outbreak on the part of the Indians, the garrison at Fort Kearny was usually not large, often not more than two companies. No direct attack was ever made on the post, however, nor were there any major Indian fights in the immediate vicinity as there were at some of the posts farther west and at the Bozeman Trail forts to the northwest.
After 1854, hostility among the Plains tribes, particularly the Cheyenne and Sioux, gradually mounted and become more wide-spread until, in the late summer of 1864 it broke in a wave of violence all along the Platte and Little Blue Rivers in Nebraska. Wagon trains were attacked, members of the trains killed and scalped, and the wagons plundered and burned. Road ranchers and stage stations were attacked and in many cases burned. Terror spread through the scattered settlements and people left their homes and fled eastward seeking safety. The alalrm spread even as far as the Missouri River and plans were made to repel a posible attack.
At Fort Kearny freighting and emigrants trains were held at the fort untill a sufficient number accumulated so they would be able to defend themselves. Soldier guards were sent with stage coaches, refugee settlers were cared for at the fort, and earthwork fortifications thrown up in anticipation of an attempted attack on the post. In spite of urgent need for troops on the Civil War front the War Department ordered the First Nebraska Cavalry and the Seventh Iowa Cavalry to the Nebraska frontier.
A notorious adjunct to Fort Kearny was Dobytown, Located a few miles west of the fort. Composed principally of adobe or sod buildings, Dobytown was a favorite rendezvous for soldiers from the fort as well as miners returning from the West. Saloons and gambling houses flourished, and arguments were frequently settled at gun point. Death was frequent, and the cemetery was reported to be larger than the town.
By the end of 1865 the principal Indian troubles shifted farther west and north, but Fort Kearny continued to be an important point in the interior of the Plains until the Union Pacific Railroab was built through in 1866-67. As settlement pushed westward the Army felt that Fort Kearny could safely be abandoned. Accordingly, on May 22, 1871, a special order was issued directing that Fort Kearny be discontinued as a military post, its garrison be transferred to Omaha Barracks and its stores to Fort McPherson seventy miles west. In 1875 the buildings were torn down and the materials removed to the North Platte and Sidney Barracks. In Decmember 1876 the military reservation was relinquished to the Department of Interior for disposal to sttlers under the homestead laws.
In a few years only the cottonwoods surrounding the parade ground and the remains of the earthworks, thrown up as fortifications in 1864, marked the place. Through the years some efforts were made at preserving the site for public but nothing definite was accomplished until in 1928 the Fort Kearny Memorial Association was formed, funds were rasied, and the forty acres where the buildings of the post had sttod were purchased. Title to the tract for use as a park was offered to the State of Nebraska and on March 26, 1929 by legislative act the offer was accepted and the site was established as a State Historical Park and Bird Reserve.
As a result of a cooperative agreement betwwen the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, the Nebraska State Historical Society has conducted extensive archeological excavations at certain bulidings sites. These studies have provided guidance to the Commission in their reconstruction of certain buildings. Today the area is designated as the Fort Kearny State Historical Park administered by the Nebraska Game and Park Commission.