Fort Riley

The post began in 1853 as Camp Center, named because its surveyors believed it stood near the center of the United States, and became Fort Riley on June 27 of that year. Capt. Edmund Ogden supervised its building. In July 1855 he arrived from Leavenworth with 50 six-mule teams loaded with materials, craftsmen and laborers to build new quarters and stables for the Dragoons. Within weeks cholera broke out among the workers. The epidemic lasted only a few days but killed 70 people, Ogden among them, and work resumed slowly before the 2nd Dragoons arrived in October.

What the plaque says

Fort Riley Fort Riley opened as a military post in 1853, one year before the creation of the Kansas Territory. The army's mission was to guard travelers who were passing through American Indian lands and to protect Indians from tres- passers. Fort Riley quelled tensions between pro- and antislavery settlers, sent troops to the Civil War, and briefly served as a Confederate prison camp. In 1866 Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry was organized here before heading west for campaigns against Plains Indians. The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry or "Buffalo Soldiers" were at times stationed here. Fort Riley became a permanent post since it was at the center of the nation's railroad network. Graduates of the U.S. Cavalry School, opened in 1892, fought in every conflict from the Spanish American War through World War II. In the years following World War II, the post became one of the largest training facilities for infantry and, in 1955, the base of operations for the First Infantry, the "Big Red One." Erected by the State of Kansas

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Konza Prairie Biological Station — 9.4 mi
  Kansas State's research prairie south of Manhattan, named for the Kanza, where every watershed burns on its own schedule and a public nature trail climbs from Kings Creek to the open hills.
• Flint Hills Discovery Center — 14 mi
  Manhattan's city-run museum of the tallgrass prairie, opened in 2012 at the edge of downtown, and the place to have the Flint Hills explained before driving into them.
• Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home — 26 mi
  The six-room house on Southeast Fourth Street where David and Ida Eisenhower raised six sons, and the library, museum and chapel that grew up around it in south Abilene.

More markers nearby

• First Capitol of Kansas — 1.2 mi
• Historical Kansas — 7.5 mi
• Fort Riley & Junction City — 8.4 mi
• Historical Kansas — 8.8 mi