Fort Churchill, Nevada (Part 2)
On February 1, 1865, there was a prison outbreak in Carson City. The warden was wounded and three men escaped. Fort Churchill men patrolled all roads leading out of Carson City. They caught two of them within a week. The third was later captured in California. The Indians made trouble one more time too. Major Charles McDermit sent 100 men to Star City in northeastern Nevada to battle Indians there. The Indians had mustered at least 500 men, though, so the soldiers returned before they could be overwhelmed. McDermit later left with 17 men to bargain with the Indians. It would require fighting several skirmishes before he could accomplish his goal. Unfortunately McDermit was shot in an ambush on August 8. The force returned to Fort Churchill shortly afterward.
It was the last time the soldiers would do battle. By January 1866, all the volunteers were mustered out of the service. The quartermaster held an auction to sell the unused supplies still left at the post. A Virginia City auctioneer bought every bit of it and then resold the goods at considerable profit. On August 9, 1866, the post became officially known as "Churchill Barracks."
Over the next three years, the soldiers did nothing but garrison duty. They did not have the manpower for Indian battles. Finally the military realized it had no further need for the fort. The Paiutes now lived on reservations by Pyramid and Walker Lakes. Any remaining Indian troubles were far away. And now with the completion of the transcontinental railroad there was no longer a need to protect emigrant trains or mail lines. It transferred the remaining men to California. Equipment was moved to Camp Halleck in eastern Nevada. It was abandoned in the Fall of 1869.
The remaining buildings were auctioned off. Samuel Bucklands bought all buildings for $750, removing salvageable doors, windows, lumber, and hardware, and using them to build a new home. No one paid much attention to the fort for several years. Then in 1884, Congress appropriated $1,200 to move the graves of 44 soldiers buried at the fort to a cemetery at Carson City.
The fort grounds stood abandoned and forgotten until 1925. The Nevada Sagebrush Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution decided to preserve the fort ruins. The land was transferred to the state from the Department of the Interior. However, at that time, the DAR didn't have any funds to start
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