Fort Mitchell, 1864-1867

The Park Service's account of this post is smaller than the war around it. Company F of the 11th Ohio Cavalry did the building in the late summer of 1864, and the work was largely done by the end of October, when the camp took General Mitchell's name. The garrison never topped a hundred men, and only one is known to have died here. Raiders drove off 112 mules from a freight train camped within sight of the walls. After the Civil War a company of the 18th Infantry held it, and no official record of its abandonment survives.

What the plaque says

Fort Mitchell 1864-1867 Mitchell Pass and the city of Mitchell, Nebraska, derive their names from a military post built near here during the Indian Wars. No trace of the sod structure remains at the site on the North Platte River bend northwest of Scott's Bluff. It was named in honor of General Robert B. Mitchell, who ordered the establishment of several sub- stations along the Great Platte River Road between Julesburg and South Pass. Fort Mitchell was constructed and manned in autumn 1864 by Company "H" of the Eleventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry under Captain J.S. Shuman. In February 1865 they helped defend Mud Springs Station against an attack by Cheyenne. In June the post provided relief for Fort Laramie troops ambushed by Sioux near Horse Creek, and that summer chased Indians who tore down telegraph lines and attacked wagon trains and stagecoaches. Army records are meager, but there are eyewitness descriptions of the fort by Eugene Ware, John Bratt, and Margaret Carrington. An official ground plan and a sketch of 1866 by William H. Jackson reveal a stockade with sally-port, firing loop-holes, and a sentinel tower. A nearby "road ranch" served as the Scott's Bluff stage station. Fort Mitchell was abandoned after the Fort Laramie peace conference of 1867. Mitchell Bicentennial Committee Nebraska State Historical Society, 2017

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Scotts Bluff National Monument — 2.8 mi
  A bluff named for a fur clerk whose death nobody witnessed, the narrow pass the wagons used beside it, William Henry Jackson's watercolors, and a 1937 road through three tunnels to the top.
• Wildcat Hills State Recreation Area — 12 mi
  A pine-covered escarpment south of Gering where bighorn sheep were released and mountain lions came back on their own, with Depression-era stone shelters and a nature center.
• Chimney Rock National Historic Site — 23 mi
  The spire the trains watched for along the North Platte, measured again and again by the people passing it, and shorter now than when the first of them wrote it down.

More markers nearby

• Rebecca Winters — 5.9 mi
• Scottsbluff Army Air Field — 6.9 mi
• The Great Smoke / The Horse Creek Treaty — 16 mi
• The Oregon Trail — 19 mi