Anyhow here is a quick recap on how the fort was created:




Most of the fort was therefore constructed of timber, either local Cottonwood or Ponderosa Pine from the slopes of the Sierra Mountains and stone (I wonder if Mr. Basalt was used in Fort Churchill?) and adobe. Yes adobe, copious amounts of adobe bricks due to the simple fact that adobe bricks could be made onsite using un-skilled labor.

I cannot locate any information on whether or not native labor was recruited in making the adobe bricks. In Spanish Central and South America native labor was used quite frequently in construction projects such as for missions, forts and other buildings, but those native laborers were nothing more than slaves. Even though a mere 45 to 60 miles away up in the Comstock Lode mines were being dug and massive amounts of timber being cut and used to shore up the mines. Also during the same time frame as the construction of Fort Churchill towns like Dayton, Virginia City, Carson City were all booming due to the discovery of silver in the Comstock Lode. So with this I am sure that craftsmen like masons, carpenters, blacksmiths were already in the area when the fort was constructed.

Information from: www.solidearth.co.nz

Information via Wikipedia

To see a modern version of Adobe Brick making, head over to: http://desertphile.org/adobe/brick.htm. This page also has some interesting points on testing adobe bricks.

It seems that much of the foundation for the adobe buildings in Fort Churchill was stone and I think Mr. Basalt was used extensively in this effort. Here is why:
Look at the foundation of this building in Fort Churchill. Do those stones look like basalt or what? Remember we passed Susan's Bluff just a few miles back on the Fort Churchill road. So we know that basalt was nearby and in great abundance.

Also it would be helpful to know if the US Army used the labor of the Calvary soldiers that Captain Joseph Stewart had taken from California to this Carson River post. The reason I ask is that if so, then maybe some of the soldiers in his company has stone mason experience as much of the stonework seems professional.

There is more to this area than just the fort itself. Such as the Buckland Station, a ranch house, a hotel and a way station for the Pony  Express. This house used timber from the Fort Churchill buildings when the fort was closed and Mr. Buckland purchased the entire fort for $750.00!

Also the area has camping grounds and when the Carson River has a decent flow you can canoe and fish. But we are here to see the remains of the fort. The satellite image on the right will give you a better understanding of the area. The green belt follows the water of the Carson River. This is a Riparian Zone that we looked at earlier when we were further back the Fort Churchill road.


Anyhow, the Nevada State Parks has a brochure available on their website or you can just Click Here and it will "magically" appear. The Visitor Center has some cool historical displays so don't bypass that building. You will be asked to stay on the marked trails and to NOT enter the buildings as they are deemed not safe.

Funny, I remember as a kid of maybe 8 or 9 years of age having visited the park and remember walking in and out of the buildings playing a hide-and-seek game with my sister. Well, either I am remembering the event correctly or we were one totally illegal family. But then again considering that this took place back in the mid 1960's, I still believe it is was very plausible.

Why were as kids allowed to run through the buildings? Most likely the park ranger or house guard had actually served with the US Calvary in the 1860's and did not finally retire until the 1960's. Maybe his last post was guarding the fort from pesky little boy's chasing their sisters in and out of the barracks! Sure, maybe he had lived to see a hundred and twenty-five birthdays! Well now, so do you still believe in magic?

OK! Moving on.

One of the first signs you will see by using the Fort Churchill road is the Pony Express sign indication a point where the Pony Express route crossed the Fort Churchill road. This is just before the dirt road turns into asphalt road! Not much to see of the trail today but I am sure if you walked a mile or so to the West you might find more of the original trail.

On the right is a map of the location in relation to Fort Churchill. And below is a Satellite image of the crossing location. The GPS location I have for the crossing point is: 39.292939,-119.278061.

Below right is a photo of the sign post denoting the actual crossing point of the Pony Express route and what is now called the Fort Churchill road. You can easily see that the Pony Express route was virtually in view of Fort Churchill. I am sure that for the riders coming in either direction the fort was a welcome sign. But even more so for those riders coming from the east as that portion of the Nevada route was a lonely ride.

The Paiutes, Shoshone and Bannocks may have viewed the fort in an entirely different manner, something more like "crap, there goes the neighborhood"!

I have not seen up to this date (7/14/16) a single photo of the fort taken during it's operational period! If any photo survives of the fort when the US Calvary occupied the fort, that photo would be invaluable to history.

But in the visitor center of Fort Churchill a large painting is available for viewing showing the fort from an artist's conceptional idea of what the fort looked like during it's operational period of 1860 to 1860.

But I went to the adobe buildings first as I did not want to loose the remaining sunlight.
 


Another very interesting fact about Fort Churchill is that it was never walled or enclosed! I used to believe as a child (due to the Hollywood fantasy machine) that all Western American forts looked like Fort Apache or Fort Yuma from some Hollywood film set.

"Of course, forts were usually shown as wooden palisaded structures and Indians often attacked them. If you've ever visited any real forts in the West you know they weren't like that at all. They were more open, adobe- or stone-built military bases. Fort Apache, NM or Fort Laramie, WY for example, are great places to visit today. You get a real sense of what it was like.

Forts became central to the Beau Geste genre (Saharan Westerns, really) and other types of film. Many were filmed at Kanab Movie Fort in Utah."

A quote from: http://jeffarnoldblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/attack-that-fort.html

On your right is a photo of a Hollywood movie set in Kanab, Utah. Typical idea of a western fort for the B-grade Cowboy/Indian/Calvary films of the 1940's and 1950's.


Compare the Hollywood fantasy fort on the right to what remains of Fort Churchill on the left. I too watched all those Western themed films of the created from the 1940's to the 1960's every weekend as a child growing up only a few dozen miles from this same fort! And yes for a point in time I thought all the Calvary forts looked like the fake one above.

Now back to some reality.


One of the first areas you will probably see when you get to the fort (unless you head for the visitor center or rest rooms) is going to be the cemetery. Marked in red in on the map at right in the upper right corner.

Note that you do not have to park in front of the cemetery or in the visitors center parking as you can see from the map in green 2 other additional parking areas closer to the adobe structures at Fort Churchill.










As was stated earlier the soldiers graves were removed back in the mid 1880's to Carson City. The existing graves now in the cemetery are those of the Buckland family who ran the Pony Express way station, Butterfield Overland stage depot and provide (sold) fresh vegetables and probably alfalfa to the commissary at Fort Churchill.

The cemetery does not seem very large in size, but then again the fort was only occupied by the US Calvary for 8 to 9 years. Some of the headstones have cracked and shifted over the years since the occupants were buried here. Considering that Mr. Buckland had purchased the fort after the Army had left, he could use the cemetery as he wanted minding not to disturb the soldiers graves.





Simply Wow! The oldest person in this cemetery is 58 years old and the youngest in age is 2 days! Was pioneer life rough? Thoroughly YES! And these dates prove it. A rough average here is 16 years. This was only about 130 years in our recent past history.

The fort is left in a state of historical decay or natural decay similar to the famous California ghost town of Bodie. In other words the buildings are left in the same condition as when the as normal aging of any building will have, no re-building of any portion of the barracks, mess hall or offices.

This has 2 effects, it gives the historian, researcher, tourists and camera toting road warriors like me a chance to examine a historical accurate set of structures. This site IS NOT a tourist trap and thank God for that!

The other effect is for people who are used to the fake tourist trap locations and expect to see a near perfect replication of Fort Churchill with all the buildings re-built to represent what the fort might have looked like in 1861.

Gross!
I can travel down to Disneyland and hang out in "Frontier Land" to have that fake feeling. I am not trying to disrespect Walt Disney's creation, just separating fact from fiction so if any reader of these pages visiting Historic Fort Churchill will not be disappointed if they were in fact expecting a typical tourist trap recreation of a Wild West Cavalry fort with John Wayne greeting them.


Something I did not know about the fort that leaves me wondering. The dirt covered floors! Bummer man. One would think that at the least some of the adobe bricks could have been laid down as a floor. Just 50 miles away in Virginia City (now a tourist trap, but fun!) the saloons all had wood floors. The hotels probably all had wood floors covered with rugs!

I mean to say how do you sweep a dirt floor for inspection? I spent some time in the California Army National Guard and while in the Active Army for training we had weekly barracks inspections and drill sergeant walk through every day.
I can just imagine the scene from 155 years ago:

"Reporting as ordered sir" "Soldiers barracks ready for inspection sir". "Fresh straw from the stable for our bedrolls and the dirt floors have been swept and mopped sir".

Captain Sagebreath answers "Mopped the floors did you say private?" "Private Rocky Basalt, you are drunk, report to the stockade"!








During the 1860's the typical soldiers diet consisted of beef, beans, saltpork, coffee and some condiments such as sugar, salt, vinegar and molasses. Whoa, wait a minute here! Vinegar was and is to never is to be considered a "condiment".

Hold on a minute here, did we not read earlier that the Buckland's sold fresh vegetables to the fort. I think that the sign narrative was speaking of soldiers in general throughout the USA.


The US Army in the second half of the 19th century let most of the far flung posts (to a politician, Washington DC is the center of the world and the further you go west from DC the further into the barbarian lands you were.




















Building Labeled as the Powder Magazine. Not sure which building is the real magazine!

This building on the right did not have a plaque next to it so I do not know what it was used for. But it does seem to have a different construction type than many of the other buildings.

Notice the small window type opening at the top of the structure and the lintel (cross beam) on the bottom.

This is quite different from normal construction methods.






The only building I can think of at Fort Churchill that might have this type of construction is the Powder Magazine which did not have windows but needed ventilation.

This was the era of Black Powder before modern nitrocellulose powder came into use. Black Powder had to be kept dry and away from any spark, hot ash from camp fires and from the soldiers smoking who might carelessly throw a burning match and boom, half your fort just got wasted.

And even worse, you had NO gunpowder to use against those pesky Indians and ruthless drunk bandits!






Watch were you step on the pathways. And especially if you are camping down by the Carson River! Rattlesnakes love to swallow rodents and rodent love your leftover food and garbage.

Western Rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus)

A habitat generalist and widely distributed over the western United States, it is represented in most of Nevada by the sub-species known as the Great Basin rattlesnake (C.o. lutosus). Its coloration is variable, but consists of primarily browns and grays. Facial stripes can be faint to pronounced.

With exception to localized overlap with the other rattlesnakes of southern Nevada, the Great Basin rattlesnake is the only one inhabiting the northern two thirds of the state.

At Fort Churchill the local lockup was called a "guard house" and not a stockade.

The word stockade also refers to a military prison in an army camp, and in some cases, even a crude prison camp or a slave camp. In these cases, the stockade keeps people inside, rather than out.

The usual punishment for mild breaches of discipline was confinement, being assigned barrack tasks, among other punishments.



In the photo below titled 'Moral Session Horse' taken at Fort Brigger, Wyoming, the soldier had to remain in this position holding the heavy wooden sabre for a given period of time as punishment for having broken some rule.




The placard in the right photo confirms some of the information stated earlier in the page at too where the construction materials came  from. Lumber from the nearby (approximately 50 miles) Sierra Nevada mountains, nails, plaster, windows and hardware came over the Sierra's. I have also received information that most of the clay for the adobe came from the Carson River while the correct type of sand was to be found nearby.

Again I wonder why the dirt floors were never covered with rock or adobe (although I understand adobe does not wear well) or even with rough cut Cottonwood planks!





As you can see the pathways between the buildings is fairly level and even so I believe most people should not have an issue getting to see all the structures and their are NO stairs to climb in this area!

As always in summer and late spring/early fall be mindful of the heat and drink plenty of aqua and blah blah blah. So I sound like your nagging neighbor. Well listen to him when it comes to safety.



Now for a mystery structure. The photo to the right and the bottom is of a structure that had no placard available to explain what it's original function was. I am guessing a water well. Sure the Carson River was only 400 to 500 feet away but during spring the runoff was heavy and the water very heavy with sediments.

Having a well within the fort structure also meant easier access for the soldiers and probably cleaner water. Remember that most likely the soldiers washed their steeds in the Carson River and the cattle in the area would also leave copious amount of droppings in or near the river whenever that came down to the river to drink.

Well water good! River water bad!

























Remember these are the living spaces for the "laundresses" and not the laundry itself. Was their a separate laundry building, I don't know! So does the fact that there were 4 rooms indicate that up to 4 women were employed as laundresses? Were the laundry ladies paid by the US Army (doubtful) or by the officers out of their own pocket? Did the enlisted men also use the services of these laundry women or did they have to wash there uniforms in the horse trough?




 

Not enough time or room for all the photos so let's head up to the visitors center and see what is on display.

Cool! Outside is a pair of ancient (well really old) civil war era cannon. Here the techical name is given as 3-inch Ordnance Rifle. That gives us 2 peices of information right away;

1. The bore size is 3 inches or 76 millimeters.
2. The cannon is rifled and not a smoothbore.

Name	Tube				Projectile (lb)	Charge (lb)	Velocity (ft/s)	Range (yd at 5°)
	Material	Bore (in)	Len (in)	Wt (lb)
3-inch Ordnance Rifle	wrought iron	3.0	69	820	9.5	1.00	1,215	1,830

The 3-inch (76 mm) rifle was the most widely used rifled gun during the war. Invented by John Griffen, it was extremely durable, with the barrel made of wrought iron, primarily produced by the Phoenix Iron Company of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. There are few cases on record of the tube fracturing or bursting, a problem that plagued other rifles made of brittle cast iron. The rifle had exceptional accuracy. During the Battle of Atlanta, a Confederate gunner was quoted: "The Yankee three-inch rifle was a dead shot at any distance under a mile. They could hit the end of a flour barrel more often than miss, unless the gunner got rattled."



We have to leave now. I hope you enjoyed the "Road Less Travelled" detailing "The Road to Fort Churchill".

Guess I will have to use one of those old paper map thingy's because the Alt 95 to the 95 south going through Schurz, Hawthorne to Mono Lake if California can have large areas without cell phone reception so no Google Directions.