Site of Fort Thompson or Camp Magraw

The superintendent behind the board's second name had a history with Utah. In 1856 W. M. F. Magraw lost the Salt Lake mail contract to Hiram Kimball, agent for the Mormon leaders, and on October 3 wrote to the president that Utah had no law and order left. When Congress asked Buchanan why he had sent an army to Utah, that letter was the first he produced. The road crew wintered here in 1857-58; old-timers kept Magraw's name on the camp. A carved sandstone tablet beside the board, placed by Lander's Boy Scout Troop 17, spells it McGraw.

What the plaque says

Site of Fort Thompson or Camp Magraw In 1856 the United States Congress appropriated money to build the central division of the Fort Kearney-South Pass-Honey Lake Wagon Road from Nebraska to California. W.M.F. Magraw was appointed superintendent by the Secretary of the Interior. He was later removed for mismanagement and replaced by W.F. Lander, who staked a new route known as the Lander Cutoff from Gilbert Station, or Burnt Ranch, to City Rocks, Idaho. Winter of 1857-58 overtook the workers at St. Mary's Station on the Oregon Trail. Frank Lowe, guide, led them to this location for winter quarters, officially named Fort Thompson, in honor of the incumbent U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Old timers called it Camp Magraw. The settlement above here, first known as Push Root, was renamed Lander by Lowe, in honor of his friend. Erected 1965 by the Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department and the Wyoming State Historical Society 1857 Site of Fort McGraw. Rendezvous of. Scouts & Trappers 1812 - 1835. Erected by Lander Tr. 17. B.S.A.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sinks Canyon State Park — 13 mi
  A river that vanishes into a limestone cave and comes back a quarter mile on, slower than it should, warmer, and with more water than went in.
• Chief Washakie's Grave — 14 mi
  The Army buried the Eastern Shoshone leader with full honors in 1900; his gravestone praises his loyalty to whites and leaves the rest out.
• St. Stephen's Mission — 17 mi
  A Jesuit mission on land the Arapaho leader Black Coal chose, its church painted with Arapaho designs, its boarding school named for what it was.

More markers nearby

• Bonneville Cabins — 6.4 mi
• Sinks Canyon - Corridor to the Winds — 8.3 mi
• Sacajawea — 13 mi
• Washakie — 14 mi