1887 Barracks Row

Two summers after the row went up, the whole Department of the Platte came to drill beside it. From August 20, 1889, General John R. Brooke ran a month-long camp of instruction under General George Crook: 102 officers and 2,155 enlisted men in fifty-eight companies from eleven posts, drawn from the Ninth Cavalry, the Fifth Artillery and six infantry regiments. They lived in a tent city about a mile from the post named Camp George Crook. The next winter the enlarged garrison was in the field again, over the Ghost Dance on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

What the plaque says

1887 Barracks Row During the 1887 expansion of Fort Robinson six adobe barracks were built on the south side of the parade ground. Later two frame barracks were added. Each building had a dormitory area 170 by 30 feet, a kitchen wing 70 by 30 feet, and housed a single troop, usually 50 to 75 soldiers. Cavalry troops occupied this row until 1916. New brick construction in the twentieth century replaced three barracks. The five remaining barracks were demolished in 1923. Nebraska State Historical Society 1991

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Robinson State Park — steps away
  The army post beside the Red Cloud Agency where Crazy Horse was bayoneted in 1877 and Morning Star's Northern Cheyenne broke out into the January cold of 1879.
• Toadstool Geologic Park — 14 mi
  A pocket of badlands in the Oglala National Grassland where sandstone caps balance on clay stems, ancient tracks cross the rock, and a trail leads on to a 10,000-year-old bison bone bed.
• Agate Fossil Beds National Monument — 21 mi
  A fossil quarry on the Niobrara that also keeps the gifts Red Cloud and other Lakota and Cheyenne visitors gave the ranching family who were their friends for thirty-five years.

More markers nearby

• Flagstaff, 1890 — steps away
• Post Headquarters, 1905 — steps away
• 1909 Brick Barracks — steps away
• Adobe Officers' Quarters — steps away