Fort Laramie National Historic Site

The Army bought the trading post in 1849, and among the first things it built that year was a two-story frame house for bachelor officers that the soldiers nicknamed Old Bedlam. It still stands on the parade ground, the oldest documented building in Wyoming, near the post trader's store, parts of which date from the same years; the store served as bank, post office and gathering place for the whole post. Two miles north, an iron bridge the King Iron Bridge and Manufacturing Company built for the Army in 1875 still spans the North Platte, the oldest military bridge standing west of the Mississippi.

When the soldiers marched out in the spring of 1890, the government sold the land and buildings at auction. More than fifty structures were sold, hauled off or torn down before local people recognized what was being lost and stopped it, and homesteaders lived in what remained for nearly half a century. The Wyoming Historical Landmark Commission took up the fort's cause in 1927, a presidential proclamation made it a national monument in 1938, and Congress enlarged it as a national historic site in 1960. Old Bedlam has since been restored to show an officer's quarters of the 1850s, and the ruins of the buildings the auction took still mark their places on the grounds.