In 1819 Secretary of War John C. Calhoun sent Colonel Henry Atkinson up the Missouri with orders to plant a chain of forts toward the Yellowstone, to warn off British traders and hold the fur trade. Winter stopped the expedition at the Council Bluff, the hill above the river where Lewis and Clark had met the Otoe and Missouria in 1804. The troops built Cantonment Missouri on the bottomland, and scurvy killed more than 200 of the 1,120 men that winter. In the spring of 1820 the river flooded the camp, and the soldiers moved up the bluff. Congress dropped the rest of the chain, and this was the only post built.
Fort Atkinson became a town. At its peak about 1,200 soldiers, families and workers lived here, close to a quarter of the army. They farmed hundreds of acres and ran a brickyard, lime kiln, quarry, sawmill and gristmill. In 1823 troops went upriver against the Arikara towns after Arikara warriors attacked William Ashley's trading party. The army left in 1827, mostly for Fort Leavenworth, and the land went back to farming.
Nebraska State Historical Society archaeologists began digging the foundations under the cropland in 1956. The state bought the land in 1963, and over about twenty years Game and Parks rebuilt the barracks square, each side two ranges of about 250 feet, along with the sutler's store and shops. Reenactors work the trades on the first weekend of each month from May to October.
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