Wyoming History: Fort Laramie Bridge Connected West To Indian Wars And Gold Boom

The sounds of cavalry and troops marching across the weathered wooden planks of the Fort Laramie Bridge over the North Platte River outside of the town of Fort Laramie are long gone.

As are glimpses of miners and stagecoaches navigating to Deadwood and the Blacks Hills to search for gold or haul it back. The nearby cottonwoods that held the two alleged murderers and thieves with ropes around their necks may have been felled for firewood.

But pedestrians are still welcome to take a stroll and imagine the history that occurred over the 400-foot stretch of man-made ingenuity that allowed Cheyenne merchants to flourish and the U.S. Army to more quickly send supplies to troops headed to battle as well as agents serving native reservations in the late 1870s through 1890s.

The Cheyenne Daily News on Feb. 6, 1875, reported that five railcars full of iron and three of wood were at the city’s depot, intended for the “military bridge” at Fort Laramie.

“It is said that the American Bridge Company of Chicago will set up the iron work,” the newspaper reported. “If so, the government will have a good job done for them.”

Well, the editor didn’t investigate the facts. The “Historic American Engineering Record” at the U.S. Library of Congress as well as the sign at the bridge today states that the bowstring truss bridge was made by King Bridge and Manufacturing Company of Cleveland, Ohio.

“The North Platte River Bowstring Truss Bridge is the first of its kind to be built in the then territory of Wyoming,” the engineering record stated. “It is also believed to be the first military bridge west of the Mississippi.”

The location of Fort Laramie at the confluence of the North Platte and Laramie rivers in 1850s through early 1870s meant that troops, Native Americans and emigrants were dependent on either a ferry or low water to get across the North Platte River.

A history of the bridge penned by John Dishon McDermott provided to Cowboy State Daily by Fort Laramie National Historic Site staff states that most emigrants traveled on the south side of the North Platte River as they headed west. That meant they had to cross the Laramie River to get to the fort.

A bridge over the Laramie River was constructed in 1851 by two traders who charged $2.50 to $3 per wagon. A second bridge over the Laramie River was constructed in 1873.

Dangerous River

However, travelers north of the North Platte River — and that included some on the Mormon trail — would need to ford or be ferried across that water to reach the fort and its services. In spring and early summer, that could be deadly.

U.S. National Park Service Fort Laramie Guide Robert Cuevas said that prior to the iron bridge, the Army often struggled getting men and supplies across to the north side of the North Platte from the fort.

In June 1850, McDermott wrote that six men drowned in attempted crossings “and one pioneer described the river as being 250-yards wide and 12-feet deep.”

“They were losing guys on the ferry, people would fall off and drown — ‘there goes our command there goes out equipment into the river,’” Cuevas said. “So, the bridge was vitally important.”

When the Union Pacific Railroad arrived in Cheyenne in 1869, local merchants saw opportunities. Freight traffic to Native American agencies and forts became big business with an estimated 15-to-20 million pounds of goods being shipped from city merchants on freighters.

By 1873, rumors spread that freighters were going to move their business to Sidney or North Platte, Neb., because of difficulties fording the North Platte River. Wyoming’s delegate to Congress, W.R. Steele on Feb. 24, 1874, introduced a bill in the U.S. House to construct a bridge across the river at or near Fort Laramie under the authority of the secretary of war. Cost was not to exceed $15,000.

Steele lobbied Secretary of War William W. Belknap that if the bridge were built, troops at Fort Laramie could “control the Sioux north of the river and facilitate the movement of men and supplies should hostilities occur at Red Cloud or Spotted Tail agencies.”

Department of the Platte General Edward Ord also informed Belknap that the North Platte could not be forded for two or three months of the year and the ferry across the river was often “carried away during high water.”

Congressional Approval

Congress passed the bill authorizing the bridge expenditure on June 23, 1874. The project received 11 bids with the King Bridge and Manufacturing Company receiving the award.

Bid plans called for an open truss bridge that could accommodate heavy wagons, and the stated distance from bank-to-bank at 410 feet.

“The deepest part of the river to top of bank is about 15 feet. The bottom is coarse gravel and cobble stones,” the bid advertisement stated. “The current is swift and unchangeable. Water in the deepest place is about 3 1/2 feet at ordinary stage.”

The King Bridge Company submitted plans for an iron truss bridge with three spans that would total 420 feet. Cost was $10,500. The U.S. Army’s quartermaster believed the remaining would be enough for substructure, or the parts that support a bridge’s foundation and footings, and other expenses.

The bridge was shipped to Cheyenne in February 1875. Wagons took the components north to the fort, but actual construction had to wait until after high water. Rock was quarried for the substructure.

Assembly of the bridge was tricky, and in a 1961 interview of Johnny O’Brien, the son of a trooper at the fort, he told a National Park Service historian that during assembly one span “had to be raised from the waters of the Platte.”

The 12-foot-wide bridge was reported complete by December 1875.

“During the middle of December, Engineer (Captain W. S.) Stanton inspected the bridge by leaving 13 army wagons loaded with stone on each of the arches for several days,” the Cheyenne Daily Leader reported on Dec. 20, 1875. “The bridge stood this severe test without showing a sign of weakness.”

However, John Hunton, a clerk at the sutler’s store at the fort wrote in his diary that one of the piers settled under the weight and had to be rebuilt.

A report in the Cheyenne Democratic Leader on March 21, 1876, reported that Stanton of the Army Corps of Engineers had returned from the fort the day before with a contingent of bridge inspectors.

“The commission finds the bridge to be well built and first class in every respect and it will be immediately accepted upon their report at headquarters,” the newspaper reported. “A list of moderate tolls to be charged has been forwarded by the War Department and is now in the hands of the commander at Fort Laramie.”

No Tolls

Those tolls would be short lived. Congress nixed the secretary of war’s request for legislation to be passed giving the commander of Fort Laramie authority over the toll funds for repairs on the bridge. In May 1876, the U.S. Army’s chief quartermaster and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman recommended the tolls be abolished.

During the campaigns against the Sioux in June of 1876 which led to the Battle of the Rosebud and the Little Big Horn massacre, the bridge became important for supplies and troops headed to Fort Fetterman.

“Men and material started heading north and west as fast as that bridge was built,” Cuevas said.

The bridge also served the gold fields and burgeoning Dakota Territory, leading to a stage line from Cheyenne to Deadwood. The stages would become targets for Native Americans as well as robbers along the road.

A Wyoming State Tribune article on Dec. 2, 1926, shared the remembrances of pioneer John Owens of Colter, Wyoming who reported two “road agents” — robbers — hung near the Old Army Bridge — he didn’t give the year.

“Yes, there were two that were hung there. They held up the stage going from Fort Laramie to Deadwood and shot and killed the driver, Jim Davis,” Owens told the paper. “A bunch of soldiers and scouts caught them at what was afterwards known as the government farm. They were taken back to Fort Laramie and when it was reported they had been caught, they were stopped by a crowd that went over to meet them. They were hung on those cottonwood trees west of the bridge …”

Following the decommissioning of Fort Laramie in the 1890, the bridge through the efforts of Wyoming’s territorial representative, was turned over to Laramie County. Congress on June 4, 1894, made it official by approving the donation of the bridge to the county. The county was required to keep it “in repair and open, free of charge, for the use of the traveling public and the military authorities of the United States.”

After the formation of Goshen County in 1911, the county took over maintenance of the iron bridge. Autos and trucks used the structure until 1958 when the county constructed a new one.

The bridge was turned over to the National Park Service in 1961.

The bridge is located on Wash 160 just southwest of the town of Fort Laramie and a mile-and-a-half northeast of Fort Laramie National Historic Site.

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.