Fort Laramie

July 9 2021

Full disclosure YES, I thought it was HOT. Not only HOT but HHH&HHH Hazy HOT Humid & HOT HOT HOT!!!!!  Maybe the humidity wasn’t terrible but for a few minutes it cranked up there. Fortunately some clouds rolled in for about an hour with a SLIGHT breeze making it semi bearable! We heard the rumble of thunder a couple of times and I thought for a few minutes it might rain but it never did. The entire area is under a severe thunder storm watch until about dark.

Fort Laramie National Monument which is about 105 miles, by road, from the town of Laramie WY, go figure.

Shortly after we got there they had a live fire canon demonstration, they shot 1 round, they called it wet moss, it didn’t go very far and the shot was not nearly as loud as I was expecting.  1/2 pound of canon black powder, he said that canon power is not the fine power you think of, he said it’s, big chunks, more about the size of rock salt. The canon they shot was a Mountain Howitzer. 

Mountain Howitzer is more like an over grown grenade, it sends shrapnel or round balls at the enemy. With a time delayed fuses of up to 6 seconds depending on how far away the target is. It takes 4 people to fire the canon.

It’s hard to see but there is a house in the distance, he said they could hit it at a little over 1000 yards. 

The canon can’t be fired to fast because the barrel gets hot, he told of one person recent or historically, I’m nor sure, receiving 3rd degree burns on their finger for touching the barrel of the canon a few seconds after it was fired. Another reason not to fire to fast, the cart carrying the canon shells only held 16 shots, not very many if your in a long battle.

Can you imagine pushing this thing for thousands of miles. 1 or 2 people stand in front of the cart and push a bar, others in your party maybe pushing from the back. This is called a Mormon Cart. In my opinion not the best idea, to learn more look up Mormon Cart.

It’s is/was a bigger large fort, there were more plaques in the distance to read but the clouds moved on by then and the temp…. skyrocketed to unbearable once the sun came back out, it was time for me to crank up the A/C in the jeep and head for home. With the off and on cloud cover it didn’t get as hot as yesterday.

I’m not sure when the fort was established, it was originally built as a trading post and had a bar/saloon as early as 1858…. that might have been 1852, my memory is a little fuzzy now.

I keep forgetting to mention that after 1861  there was a transcontinental telegraph ran by the Army. At the time they could only send a signal 20 to 60 miles, so there were telegraph relay stations regularly spaced out along the rout, all one had to do was follow the wires.

I’m not sure but for a while at least, I think, the telegraph went to San Francisco so it may have turned southwest at Fort Caspar and didn’t continue over South Pass.  I know it went to Fort Caspar. It is Fort Caspar, not Casper.

Also, the pony express came through Fort Laramie until the transcontinental telegraph came along.

The End