Fort Morgan (Colorado)
military post in Colorado
Fort Morgan, first called Camp Tyler and Camp Wardwell, was established in the present-day city of Fort Morgan in Morgan County, Colorado as a U.S. military post in 1864. It operated until 1868. There is a historical marker in a city park in remembrance of its history.
History
The station and military post, first called Camp Tyler, was established in 1859. It is estimated that the Pike's Peak Gold Rush drew about 100,000 people to Colorado. The South Platte Trail was the safest route. In 1859, a branch of the trail away from the South Platte River was established in the wilderness near the present day city of Fort Morgan during the gold rush to reduce the length of the trip to Denver. Fort Morgan was established in the mid-1860s as a defensive measure against the threat of attack by Native Americans.
The military post was also called Camp Wardwell. Made a permanent fort with adobe and sod buildings in July 1865, the fort was manned that year by Confederate prisoners of war, nicknamed "galvanized rebels", who had enlisted in the Union Army rather than continue their fate as POWs.
“Fort Morgan (Colorado)” enters the record as military post in Colorado. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fort, Morgan and Colorado can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q55611918. Authority coordinates are 40.261, -103.800. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1864, 1868, 1859 and 1865.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fort Morgan (Colorado)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.