Fort Larned National Historic Site

Fort Larned began in October 1859 as the Camp on Pawnee Fork. William Bent, the agent for the Upper Arkansas tribes, had urged a permanent post here, writing that to control the Indians the army needed 'the perpetual presence of a controlling military force.' The post was named for the army's paymaster general, Benjamin Larned, who never came to Kansas. Between 1866 and 1868 its adobe and sod buildings gave way to the sandstone barracks, quarters, shops and storehouses that stand around the parade ground today.

It was also an agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche and Plains Apache, and 1867 turned on it. On April 12 General Winfield Scott Hancock met Cheyenne chiefs here and set out to intimidate them. Two days later his column approached a combined Cheyenne and Lakota village up the Pawnee Fork; the women and children, remembering Sand Creek, fled, and Hancock had the empty village burned, opening a summer of war across Kansas. That October the fort was the supply depot for the Medicine Lodge council, and in 1868 the treaty goods were issued here, including the arms and ammunition the Cheyenne were to hunt with. In November the 7th Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's camp on the Washita.

The visitor center shows artifacts from the burned village and a sword found near where Black Kettle fell; the village site is privately owned and closed to the public. The army left in 1878; from 1885 to 1966 the buildings served as a ranch headquarters, which helped them survive.