Fort Snelling Army Base, St. Paul Minnesota

Fort Snelling stood on the high bluff at Bdote (Bdote means "where two waters come together"), the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, one of the most strategically important and culturally significant places in the Upper Midwest. For the Dakota, Bdote was and remains a sacred homeland with deep historical meaning. For the United States Army in the early nineteenth century, the same ground offered command of river traffic, proximity to the fur trade, leverage over diplomacy with Native nations, and a forward military position from which federal authority could be projected into a region the government was only beginning to dominate. Fort Snelling therefore mattered not simply as a frontier outpost, but as a military instrument of expansion on a landscape that already had long Indigenous significance.

The installation's history was unusually long and unusually layered. It began as Fort St. Anthony in the 1820s, became Fort Snelling when the stone fortification was completed, closed on the eve of statehood, reopened in the Civil War as a vast induction camp, expanded into an Upper Post that served as headquarters, supply base, and garrison, then evolved into a World War I officers' training and hospital post and a World War II induction and intelligence center. By the time it was decommissioned in 1946, Fort Snelling had helped carry the Army from the frontier era to the age of global war. Its later afterlife added still more layers: veterans' facilities, a national cemetery, a state park, airport land, preserved historic structures, and a major interpretive site run by the Minnesota Historical Society.

Origins, Purpose, and Construction

The military story began in the aftermath of the War of 1812, when American officials wanted stronger control of the Upper Mississippi Valley and less British influence in the fur trade. In 1805 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike reached Bdote and made an unauthorized arrangement with Dakota leaders for land on which military posts might be built. That agreement was legally questionable, but it anticipated the federal project that followed. In 1819 troops of the Fifth U.S. Infantry arrived at the river junction, and construction began in 1820 under Colonel Josiah Snelling. The post was first known as Fort St. Anthony. It was completed in 1825 and then named Fort Snelling in honor of the officer who had directed its creation.

The fort that emerged was the Army's major Upper Mississippi post. It was not simply an isolated blockhouse. It was a stone-walled installation with barracks, officers' quarters, storehouses, batteries, workshops, gardens, stables, landing facilities below the bluff, and the Indian agency and fur-trade world in its orbit. Soldiers at the post were expected to do much more than stand guard. They built and repaired structures, hauled supplies from distant sources, milled flour at St. Anthony Falls, cut firewood, cultivated roughly four hundred acres of gardens, and maintained the daily operations of a remote post hundreds of miles from its nearest dependable supply base. In this period Fort Snelling was both a military installation and an organizing center for the American occupation of the region.

In its first decades, Fort Snelling's mission was expansive and political as much as defensive. The Army used it to protect American interests in the fur trade, deter British advances from Canada, enforce boundaries between Native nations, and discourage Euro-American settlement on land the government had not yet fully opened. The fort was also a diplomatic node. The St. Peters Indian Agency, built on the reservation in 1820, was central to negotiations among the federal government, Dakota, and Ojibwe leaders. Treaties, trade, military presence, and federal authority all converged there. Fort Snelling was one of the places where the United States translated abstract claims of sovereignty into daily supervision of a contested region.

This early post was not a place of constant fighting. MNopedia notes that there was little armed conflict at the fort during the expansionist era and that the site never came under attack. Yet the absence of sieges should not make the installation seem unimportant. The fort's importance lay precisely in the fact that it represented a standing federal presence capable of shaping settlement, diplomacy, labor, and trade without needing a pitched battle to justify itself. Fort Snelling was the Upper Mississippi hub of a military frontier that increasingly turned Indigenous homelands into administratively managed American space.

Slavery, Enslaved Labor, and the Scotts

Fort Snelling also has to be understood as a site where the Army tolerated and supported slavery in a place where slavery was legally prohibited. Between fifteen and thirty enslaved people lived there in the 1820s and 1830s. Officers, government officials, and traders used enslaved labor for cooking, laundry, cleaning, and domestic service. Lawrence Taliaferro, the Indian agent, relied heavily on that labor, and the Army supported the system by allowing officers to bring enslaved people into the post and by recognizing such labor in practice.

Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott lived at Fort Snelling in the 1830s as enslaved people. Their residence at the fort later became central to their freedom suits, because both the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery in the area. The Army's complicity in allowing slavery there made Fort Snelling part of the story that culminated in Scott v. Sandford in 1857, one of the most consequential Supreme Court cases in American history. For that reason, Fort Snelling's history cannot be reduced to frontier soldiers and stone walls; it also belongs to the history of slavery, freedom claims, and the sectional crisis.

Closure, Statehood, and Civil War Reopening

By the late 1850s the strategic frontier had moved westward. Minnesota's admission as a state and the creation of newer posts made the old fort seem less necessary. Fort Snelling closed in 1858, and the government sold the fort and reservation to Franklin Steele, the post sutler and a local entrepreneur, who imagined development schemes that never fully materialized. The installation's first Army life therefore ended not in battle but in obsolescence, neglect, and speculative transfer.

The Civil War quickly reversed that decline. When the war began, Minnesota reopened Fort Snelling as a training and induction center for volunteers. It became the principal military gateway through which the state's soldiers passed into federal service. During the Civil War era, nearly twenty-five thousand soldiers were inducted and trained there. The First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry was the first unit recruited at the fort in April 1861, and in total twenty-one Minnesota military units were raised there. As the war went on and troop numbers rose, additional wooden barracks were built outside the old fort walls, and at times so many men were present that some had to live in tents. The installation that had seemed dispensable in 1858 became indispensable three years later.

The US-Dakota War of 1862 made Fort Snelling even more consequential. Around fourteen hundred of the troops raised there served in that conflict. Colonel Henry Sibley assembled forces at the fort for operations against the Dakota, and after the fighting ended the government moved about sixteen hundred Dakota and mixed-race non-combatants, mostly women, children, and the elderly, to a concentration camp below the fort. More than 1,600 people were confined there in a stockaded enclosure during the winter of 1862-1863 while awaiting expulsion from Minnesota. This episode is essential to the fort's history: Fort Snelling was not only a recruiting center and military post but also a site of imprisonment, dispossession, and enforced removal.

Department of the Dakota, Upper Post, and the Expanding Garrison

After the Civil War, Fort Snelling did not return to its earlier stone-fort identity. Instead, it expanded. In the 1870s and 1880s it became headquarters of the Department of the Dakota and a staging and supply base for campaigns against Native nations farther west. The Army invested in new infrastructure, and the installation grew into what later became known as the Upper Post. This was the period in which Fort Snelling changed from a compact early republic frontier fort into a broader military reservation with headquarters buildings, officers' housing, new barracks, utilities, and support facilities suited to a larger and more modern Army.

One of the most important garrison chapters of that era was the presence of the Twenty-Fifth U.S. Infantry from 1882 to 1888. The Twenty-Fifth was a segregated African American regiment, one of the units later known as the Buffalo Soldiers. Several of its companies and its regimental band were stationed at Fort Snelling while the rest of the regiment served elsewhere in the region. Their presence places Fort Snelling squarely within the history of the post-Civil War segregated Army and the Black regular units that served across the West.

Fort Snelling also served during the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War. Many of the stone and brick buildings constructed after 1898 date from this expansion phase and helped give the post its later appearance. The fort that went into the twentieth century was no longer merely the old walled Lower Post. It was a broad military campus of old and new components, part frontier relic and part modern garrison.

World War I: Officer Training and General Hospital No. 29

World War I again transformed the installation. The Army needed officers quickly, and Fort Snelling became one of the country's officer training camp sites. The National Park Service records that from the two camps held there in 1917, 2,552 graduates emerged from a pool of 6,000 applicants from around the Midwest. Training included general military preparation and branch-specific instruction, and the grounds were turned into trench systems for mock battles that drew thousands of spectators. In this phase Fort Snelling functioned as a mass wartime training machine.

When the officer camps ended, the post was redesignated General Hospital No. 29 in September 1918. Minnesota Historical Society materials state that the hospital ultimately spread across the entire post and reached 1,200 beds before closing on August 1, 1919. Its first major duty was treating victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic, after which it cared for returning World War I veterans and specialized in reconstructive surgery and artificial limbs. AMEDD sources show that Fort Snelling had first been considered for hospital use in 1917, then was finally turned over to the Medical Department in August 1918 and adapted through glazed porches, corridor connections, new utilities, kitchens, and other hospital conversions. Fort Snelling in World War I was therefore both a training center and a reconstruction hospital.

Interwar Fort Snelling

After World War I the post took on a more settled peacetime character. Minnesota Historical Society materials recall that Fort Snelling came to be seen as the "country club of the army," with polo, swimming, and other recreational amenities. The interwar post was not idle, however. In the 1920s it hosted rigorous officer courses, and in the 1930s it benefited from New Deal programs. The Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration repaired old buildings, improved roads and utilities, cleared brush, built athletic facilities, expanded garages, added a bakery and barracks, and generally reconditioned the installation. Fort Snelling remained valuable because it combined historic permanence, ample land, and proximity to the Twin Cities.

Fort Snelling National Cemetery also emerged from this later military landscape. Earlier burial grounds had existed at the fort since the 1820s, but in 1870 a formal post cemetery was created. In the mid-1930s a grassroots veterans' movement successfully pushed for a national cemetery on the reservation, and Congress authorized it in 1936 and 1937. Fort Snelling National Cemetery was dedicated on July 14, 1939, the first national cemetery created through such grassroots organizing. That development underscored the post's continuing military and commemorative significance even before the Army's final wartime expansion.

World War II: Induction, Military Police, Railway Service, and MISLS

World War II proved to be the most active period in Fort Snelling's history. The Army adapted the cantonment south of the main fort into a recruiting and induction station and reception center for the massive influx of draftees and volunteers. In September 1941 the cantonment had 38 buildings capable of processing 250 recruits a day. After Pearl Harbor the fort expanded rapidly; by the end of 1942, more than 260 additional buildings stood there and a staff of 700 could process 450 recruits a day. During the war Fort Snelling sprawled across a 1,500-acre site of offices, rail yards, warehouses, barracks, parade grounds, and classrooms and became the largest and most capable recruiting and induction station in the Midwest. More than 300,000 men and women entered the military there during the war.

This wartime installation did more than process recruits. The War Department activated military police battalions there, including the 701st and 710th, to guard prisoners of war, protect strategic sites, and replace National Guard functions absorbed by federal service. It also established the national headquarters of the Military Railway Service at Fort Snelling in May 1942, where officers and enlisted men worked on railroad operating procedures and transportation planning for battle zones. These lesser-known functions show the breadth of the post's wartime utility. Fort Snelling was a personnel-processing hub, but it was also a training and planning center for specialized wartime functions.

After 1944 the installation took on yet another mission when the Military Intelligence Service Language School moved there from Camp Savage. At Fort Snelling, Nisei Japanese American soldiers studied Japanese, Korean, and Chinese language and culture for service as interpreters, interrogators, translators, and intelligence specialists in the Pacific. NPS states that the school operated there from August 1944 to October 1946 and produced battle-ready translators and code breakers whose work was later thought to have shortened the Pacific war by two years. Fort Snelling's final wartime significance therefore extended far beyond the Midwest: it became part of the intelligence infrastructure of the war against Japan.

Decommissioning and the Breakup of the Reservation

A year after World War II ended, Fort Snelling was decommissioned as an active military post. The final retreat took place on October 14, 1946. Minnesota Historical Society materials note that the Veterans Administration then took over portions of the property and used some buildings as an outpatient clinic until 1989. Other parts of the old reservation were transferred or reused in different ways. By 1956 the Metropolitan Airports Commission had acquired 700 acres of former fort land to expand what became Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. What had once been a single military reservation began to fragment into a complex patchwork of veteran, transportation, cemetery, park, and historic uses.

Base Chronology

• 1805 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike made an unauthorized land arrangement with Dakota leaders for future military posts in the region.
• 1819 Soldiers of the Fifth U.S. Infantry arrived at Bdote in preparation for building the post.
• 1820 Construction of Fort St. Anthony began under Colonel Josiah Snelling.
• 1820 The St. Peters Indian Agency was established on the military reservation.
• 1825 The fort was completed and named Fort Snelling.
• 1830s Dred Scott and Harriet Robinson Scott lived at Fort Snelling as enslaved people.
• 1837 Treaty negotiations at the St. Peters Indian Agency linked the fort to federal land cessions and diplomacy.
• 1858 Fort Snelling closed and was sold to Franklin Steele after Minnesota statehood.
• 1861-04 Fort Snelling reopened as a Civil War training center; the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry was the first unit recruited there.
• 1861-1865 Nearly 25,000 soldiers were inducted and trained at Fort Snelling during the Civil War era.
• 1862-08 Troops assembled at Fort Snelling for the US-Dakota War.
• 1862-11-13 Dakota non-combatants arrived at Fort Snelling and were soon confined below the fort.
• 1862-12 Soldiers built the stockaded concentration camp below the fort for more than 1,600 Dakota people.
• 1870 A formal Fort Snelling cemetery was created for soldiers who died while stationed at the post.
• 1870s-1880s Fort Snelling became headquarters of the Department of the Dakota and a staging and supply base for western campaigns.
• 1879 Headquarters for the Department of the Dakota moved to the newly built Upper Post headquarters building.
• 1882-1888 The Twenty-Fifth U.S. Infantry, one of the Buffalo Soldier regiments, garrisoned Fort Snelling.
• 1898-1902 Fort Snelling served during the Spanish-American War and Philippine-American War and added many new brick and stone buildings.
• 1917 Fort Snelling began officer training camps for World War I.
• 1917 2,552 officers graduated from the two Fort Snelling training camps.
• 1918-09 Fort Snelling was designated General Hospital No. 29.
• 1918-1919 General Hospital No. 29 treated influenza victims and returning soldiers and specialized in reconstructive surgery and artificial limbs.
• 1919-08-01 General Hospital No. 29 closed.
• 1920s Fort Snelling hosted officer courses and developed a reputation as the "country club of the army."
• 1930s CCC and WPA labor reconditioned roads, utilities, buildings, and athletic facilities at the fort.
• 1939-07-14 Fort Snelling National Cemetery was dedicated.
• 1941-09 The wartime cantonment could process 250 recruits per day in 38 buildings.
• 1941 The 701st Military Police Battalion was activated at Fort Snelling.
• 1942 The 710th Military Police Battalion was activated at Fort Snelling.
• 1942-05 National headquarters of the Military Railway Service was established at Fort Snelling.
• 1942 More than 260 additional buildings stood at the fort, and staff could process 450 recruits a day.
• 1941-1945 More than 300,000 men and women entered military service through Fort Snelling during World War II.
• 1944-08 The Military Intelligence Service Language School moved to Fort Snelling.
• 1944-1946 About 6,000 soldiers studied Japanese at the language school at Fort Snelling.
• 1946-10-14 Fort Snelling held its final retreat and was decommissioned as an active military post.
• 1956 The Metropolitan Airports Commission had acquired 700 acres of former fort land for airport expansion.
• 1960 Fort Snelling became Minnesota's first National Historic Landmark.
• 1962 Fort Snelling State Park opened at the river confluence below the bluffs.
• 1965 The Minnesota Historical Society began restoration of the historic fort.
• 2022-05-28 After major rehabilitation, MNHS reintroduced the public to Historic Fort Snelling with a renewed interpretive vision.
• 2026 Historic Fort Snelling remained open with the Plank Museum & Visitor Center and guided access to the restored fort.