Fort McKinney

The lieutenant this fort is named for was killed in the fight that ended Cheyenne resistance. On November 25, 1876, Mackenzie sent Second Lieutenant John A. McKinney of the 4th Cavalry to intercept Cheyenne warriors on the Red Fork; he was shot in what is now called Ambush Draw and died on Hospital Hill, and the Cheyenne Walking Whirlwind was killed in the same clash. His name went first to Cantonment Reno on the Powder, then followed the garrison here, and the two Fort McKinneys have been confused ever since.

What the plaque says

Fort McKinney First known as Cantonment Reno, Fort McKinney was established in 1876 on the Powder River near present-day Kaycee. In 1877, the Fort was renamed for Lieutenant John McKinney, who died during the Dull Knife Battle in 1876. The Fort's presence directly violated the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties. The Army determined the original site to be unsanitary and moved the Fort 45 miles north, to its current location south of here along Clear Creek in 1878. From here, the Army monitored the Sioux and Cheyenne activities, kept the peace between the Arapaho, Shoshone, and Crow, and protected the settlers moving into the Powder River Basin. Here, Fort McKinney had 14 officers' quarters, known as "The Line," barracks for up to seven companies (approximately 1,400 men), laundresses' quarters, offices, a hospital, a bakery, storehouses, stables, and auxiliary buildings. Of the original fort buildings, only the hospital remains. During the Johnson County War of 1892, President Benjamin Harrison ordered Fort McKinney troops to end the fighting between the cattle barons and small landowners. Troops escorted the cattlemen and their hired Texas gunmen to the Fort for their own safety. Until it closed in 1894, Fort McKinney supplied the dominant economic stimulus for the nearby town of Buffalo. The Army deeded the land to the State of Wyoming in 1894, and in 1903, it became the Wyoming Soldiers' and Sailors' Home. Today it serves as the Veterans' Home of Wyoming.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Occidental Hotel — 2.2 mi
  Buffalo's 1880 grand hotel, its 1908 saloon ceiling still pocked with bullet holes, won once in a poker game and nearly torn down in the 1990s.
• Fort Phil Kearny State Historic Site — 14 mi
  A Bozeman Trail fort whose wood trains were attacked for two years, and the wagon-box corral where its woodcutters held out behind new breech-loaders in 1867.

More markers nearby

• Fort McKinney Monuments and Plaques — 0.5 mi
• Powder River Country — 2.2 mi
• Bozeman Trail — 2.9 mi
• Buffalo — 5.4 mi