Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains, by Douglas C. McChristian

Of all the U.S. Army posts in the West, none witnessed more history than Fort Laramie, positioned where the northern Great Plains join the Rocky Mountains. From its beginnings as a trading post in 1834 to its abandonment by the army in 1890, it was involved in the buffalo hide trade, overland migrations, Indian wars and treaties, the Utah War, Confederate maneuvering, and the coming of the telegraph and first transcontinental railroad. Meticulously researched and gracefully told, this is a long-overdue military history of one of the American West’s most venerable historic places.