Fort Snelling, Minnesota
Fort Snelling is a U.S. Army post first established as Fort St. Anthony in present day St. Paul, Hennepin County, Minnesota. Colonel Josiah Snelling began construction on the permanent fort in 1820. The post was completed and renamed Fort Snelling after Colonel Snelling in 1825. The fort was abandoned in 1857, but reactivated in 1861 by state volunteer troops. Federal troops returned in 1866. Deactivated in 1946.
A U.S. Army post built out as an enclosed diamond with bastions at all four corners situated on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Minnesota River. The western bastion was a large, round stone tower and opposing it on the east was a semicircular bastion housing a gun battery facing the Mississippi River. The north bastion housed a gun battery in a five sided stone blockhouse and the south bastion also housed a gun battery but in a six sided stone blockhouse. The bastions were connected by a high 10' stone wall with two entrances near the western end of the post. A central parade was surrounded by four long buildings that housed the single and married officers, the enlisted troops and offices At the head of the parade, on the east side, was the commanding officer's quarters. The commissary, guard house, hospital and shops were built into the south walls. Other support buildings including a magazine, a sutler's store and a chapel were built in the western corner of the parade.
Located east of the fort was an American Fur Company trading post and south of the fort was a Columbia Fur Company trading post.
The fort was abandoned in 1857 and sold in 1858 along with 8,000 acres of land to Franklin Steele, a former sutler.
U.S. Civil War (1861-1865)
Fort Snelling was leased back from the private owner and reactivated in 1861 as a state volunteer training center during the U.S. Civil War. The post was home to some 25,000 Union soldiers during the conflict.
Post U.S. Civil War
Federal troops returned after the war in 1866, making the post the headquarters of the vast Military Department of Dakota. The troops at Fort Snelling were active in the Indian Wars of the second half of the 19th century.
The new Headquarters required a rapid expansion of the post and the old walled fort was no longer big enough to house the number of troops required. The post was expanded into a new area that became known as the Upper Post. Much of this expansion took place in 1879-1880 and 1885. The result was a typical open plan post of that era. Four Large, two company brick barracks were built in a line along the east side of what is now known as Taylor Avenue in 1885. On the west side of Taylor avenue was a line of 10 sets of officer quarters with one set being the post commander's quarters. The officers quarters were built in stages, the initial set of 5 in 1879-1880 and a second set of 4 in 1892 and a single duplex in 1905 (not clear if this was replacement construction). By 1904 a Bachelor Officers Quarters, a bakery, a fire station, a guardhouse, a post hospital and a dead house had been constructed. Additional barracks and infrastructure were built circa 1898 to support cavalry and artillery companies but they no longer remain.
On the old walled Fort Snelling site eleven buildings have been reconstructed around the parade and four of the original sixteen buildings remain. The most distinctive of the original structures is the large stone tower in the western corner.
On the Upper Post some 28 historically significant buildings remain in various states. Three of the four original brick barracks are still there and 10 officers quarters are still standing. The 1907 Cavalry Drill Hall building has been restored and repurposed as a Boy Scout facility.
Sources:
- Template:Roberts, page 438
- UpperPost.com - Reuse Study
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