Fort Gibson celebrates its bicentennial
FORT GIBSON, Okla. (KFOR) — An early 1800’s map of Oklahoma doesn’t have much to show except rivers and where a growing number of Native American Tribes were being settled.
From the air, even today, it’s possible to see why Col. Mathew Arbuckle moved his 7th Infantry Regiment from Fort Smith, Arkansas to this spot April 21, 1824, where the Arkansas and Grand Rivers come together.
Historian Jennifer Frazee explains, “the purpose of establishing the fort was to further westward expansion and insure Indian removal.
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She can still walk exactly where the first settlements and Fort Gibson were placed.
Frazee points to a round ring of stone inside the wood stockade.
“That well dates back to 1824,” she explains.
The log buildings are replicas re-built to scale by the WPA in the 1930’s, but visitors still get the idea of hundreds of soldiers living in primitive barracks, eating bread they baked and produce they grew themselves in good lowland soil.
Frazee says, “They kept the kitchen garden right outside.”
Fort Gibson became a sprawling military base starting with canvas tents, then growing to rock buildings on Garrison Hill in proceeding decades.
The old commissary, newer barracks, and hospital still survive, though a lot of soldiers stationed here did not.
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“This place was known as ‘the charnel house of the west’,” Frazee says. “It was really marshy here so people were getting malaria and cholera.”
Soldiers stationed here fought in the Battle of Honey Springs during the Civil War.
They helped keep the peace among tribes removed here by the federal government after the Trail of Tears.
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“It’s got a lot of history,” says Frazee. “I don’t know of very many places in Oklahoma where you can go and touch something that somebody 200 years ago also touched. It’s pretty amazing.”
The town of Fort Gibson (the oldest in Oklahoma) still sits above the Arkansas River.
The first military installation in what would become Oklahoma sits here as well, almost exactly 2 centuries later.
The National Historic Site and surrounding community planned big bicentennial celebrations for Saturday, April 20th beginning with a parade through town to the old fort.
For more information on the schedule of events you can go to the Oklahoma Historical Society website or visit the Town of Fort Gibson Bicentennial Facebook.
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