Fort Ter-Wer

The bronze says the fort kept peace between Indians and whites. It stood on the Klamath River Reservation, set aside in 1855 inside Yurok country and far smaller than it, and in the Yurok Tribe's account its work included moving Yurok families and forcing them into farming and English. Wiyot survivors from Fort Humboldt were sent here in 1860. The flood of 1861-62 took the fort and the agency at Wau-kell across the river; in June 1862 the soldiers left, escorting Indians forty-three miles north to the new Smith River Reservation.

What the plaque says

Fort Terwer Site of Fort Terwer, United States military post, established October 12, 1857, by First Lieutenant George Crook and men of Company D to keep peace between the Indians and whites. The fort was destroyed by a flood. in December, 1861, and abandoned June 10, 1862 California Registered Historical Landmark No. 544 Plaque placed by the California State Park Commission in cooperation with the Del Norte County Historical Society, May 20, 1961.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gold Bluffs Beach and Fern Canyon — 8.3 mi
  A beach that set off a gold stampede in 1850, and the fern-walled slot a creek has cut through the same bluffs.
• Crescent City Harbor — 19 mi
  The harbor the Pacific aims its tsunamis at, rebuilt after 2011 to ride the next one out.
• Stout Memorial Grove — 20 mi
  A lumberman's memorial made of the kind of forest his company cut, kept open underneath by the river's floods.
• Tall Trees Grove — 21 mi
  Where a 1963 measurement found the world's tallest known tree on timber company land, and helped decide where a national park would go.

More markers nearby

• Battery Point Lighthouse — 20 mi
• S.S. Emidio — 20 mi
• Brother Jonathan Cemetery — 20 mi
• Site of Old Indian Village at Pebble Beach, Crescent City — 21 mi