Fort Dodge: Its Founding & Construction

Send us a textThe story begins on April 5, 1865, when Captain Henry Pearce leaves Fort Larned, Kansas, with a company of Kansas volunteers to establish the new post. Captain Pearce's mission was to engage and discourage the large bands of Comanches, Apaches, and Kiowas. They were encamped on the Cimarron and Crooked Creek regions of the Arkansas valley. Pearce selected a site located 6 miles east of Fort Atkinson that guarded the Santa Fe Trail and stood midway between the two major Indian cr...