Black and white photograph of a row of buildings half hidden behind piles of snow at Fort Niobrara, Nebraska. An oil lantern hangs from a pole in the middle of the snow.
Fort Niobrara was established April 22, 1880, by Major John Jacques Upham, 5th Cavalry, and located on the right bank of the Niobrara River near the mouth of the Minnechaduze, a few miles east of the present town of Valentine. The fort provided protection to the settlers and cattlemen of the area from the Sioux Indians, who were by this time a broken people but still feared, and controlled the Indians at the Spotted Tail Agency. The fort was abandoned on October 22, 1906, and the military reservation is now a National Wildlife Refuge.--Frazer, Robert W. Forts of the West: An Indispensable Handbook of All Presidios and Military Forts West of the Mississippi up to 1898 (1965)
