FORT LARAMIE – The Fort Laramie National Historic Site is more than just a collection of old buildings and military memorabilia.
From the earliest indigenous people to the fur traders to the great migrations of the Oregon and Mormon Trails as the country expanded west, the park offers a glimpse into the wide and varied cultures that made America.
And this marks a departure from the original focus of the park on its history as a major military outpost, among the earliest in the state, says park superintendent Tom Baker. From its establishment as a National Historic Site in 1938 through last year, the centennial of the National Park Service, the focus of the park has been almost exclusively on its military history, he said.
“We want to tell the much deeper context of the site,” Baker said. “We want to bring more flavor of that
broader context.”
Fort Laramie served as an active military post from 1849 to about 1890. That’s just a small segment of the stories of the region and the now-833 acre park is the living repository of those voices.

National Park Week
The extended week of April 15 to April 23 marks National Park Week 2017, the “official” opening week for National Park Service units across the country. There aren’t any special programs planned for the week at Fort Laramie, said Eric Valencia, chief of interpretation and visitor services. His staff of NPS rangers and volunteers is, instead, planning for the
entire season.
The first big observance will honor veterans on Memorial Day, May 29. The site will also host a Night Sky Party on June 24 as well as the annual Independence Day Celebration on July 4.
Throughout the summer, specific portions of the fort’s history will be featured, beginning with the impacts of the fur trade in June. Native American history and culture in the region will be highlighted in July and August will focus on the Immigrant Trails.

In the past, a handful of big demonstration days have been planned. Beginning this year, that tradition will change, to include more, smaller-scale Living History days each weekend, Valencia said.
“We’re attempting to reach more visitors with the broader scope of our interpretive themes,” he said. “And, during the summer days, there are usually one or two rangers in period attire doing what we call ‘roving interpretation.’”
With a small, full-time staff of National Park Service rangers, a significant portion of the interpretation and demonstration duties fall on a dedicated cadre of volunteers. And the park is always looking for more volunteers, both general history enthusiasts and specialists in perhaps one or more areas of historic re-enactment, Valencia said.

Different reasons
Last year, almost 58,000 people visited Fort Laramie NHS. And the majority of those visitors had the park in mind as their final destination when they headed out.
The reasons people head to Fort Laramie are varied. While its something of a “niche market,” the fort holds something that resonates with its visitors.
For some, it’s historic research, either through a general interest in the west, military history or even family history with the immigrant trails.
“It’s always been in the back of their minds,” Valencia said. “The myth we carry in our minds of the mythos of the grandeur and history of the west.
“We’re also seeing more people who are visiting the National Parks in general,” he said. “I think part of that points to the success of the Find Your Parks Program” during the NPS Centennial last year.
One family following the history of the region recently was the Frye family of Longmont, Colo. Steve, Julie and son Charlie, 14, spent part of their day Wednesday walking the wooden plank floors and fine gravel paths, dipping their toes in the rivers of time on a spring break history tour of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming.
“I’m a history nerd,” Charlie said during a pause from their wanderings under the wide covered porch fronting the 1874 Cavalry Barracks. “This is amazing and beautiful.
“I can imagine myself as a soldier or a general or a Native American,” he said. “I can almost imagine how they lived and what the fort
looked like.”

‘Silence is deafening . . .’
The central attractions at the Fort Laramie National Historic site park are the buildings, a mix of foundation outlines, partial ruins and restored buildings. Stocking the intact and restored buildings with period-correct accoutrements has been a multi-
decade effort.
Most of the historic furniture and other items were gathered beginning as far back as the 1960s, when the NPS as a whole made those acquisitions a priority. Most of the larger pieces are reproductions, carefully manufactured decades ago to fit the years they represent.
Strolling around Fort Laramie can be a solemn experience, one not even Valencia, who’s at the park every day, is immune to. When he gets a chance to get away from his office and his many duties, he hikes up to the old Non-Commissioned Officer’s Quarters, a smaller barracks where senior NCOs would have lived while stationed at the fort.
Just a handful of standing stone and mortar walls today, the NCO Quarters is one of the first structures visitors see in the distance as they look south while driving on Hwy. 160, the main access road from the town of Fort Laramie. It sits on a bluff, the highest point in the modern-day park grounds, commanding a wide vista of the main barracks, mess halls, offices and other structures below.
“It’s just standing walls now,” he said. “But there’s still a sense of occupation, of activity, that’s very strong for me there.
“I can imagine what the fort looked like,” Valencia said. “I tell people the silence is deafening
there sometimes.”