10/7/2009:
"Go West, young man." This advice given by Horace Greeley was certainly apropos for the soldiers constructing the new US Army encampment on the Dakota plains near present-day Bismarck in 1872. Located on the frontier of the American West, the new infantry post would facilitate American expansion by protecting nearby settlers as well as the crews of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Perhaps with Greeley's famous words calling for Westward expansion echoing in the soldiers' minds, the new army post was dubbed Camp Greeley.
While Camp Greeley was named for the editor of the New York Tribune, the Liberal Republican's 1872 presidential candidate and one of the nineteenth century's most influential public figures, the name was short-lived. Almost a year after Horace Greeley's defeat as a presidential contender, the military changed the camp's name. On this date in 1873, Camp Greeley was officially rechristened Camp Hancock; named after the commander of the Department of Dakota.
Camp Hancock initially continued to fill the same role as Camp Greeley, serving as a strategic Army post along the Missouri River. But once railroad development lessened the importance of the Missouri for transporting goods, and peace with local American Indian groups made the protection of local settlements by the US Army superfluous, Camp Hancock's role began to change. In 1874 the US Army Signal Corps established a "reporting station" at the post to transmit military orders and help keep track of the nation's weather patterns. The post's troops were withdrawn in 1877, and in 1894 the camp was finally decommissioned. While no longer a military fort, Camp Hancock soldiered on; first as a full-time weather station of the Weather Bureau, and eventually as the local headquarters for the US Soil Conservation Service.
Today, little remains of the old frontier post now located in the heart of Bismarck. While most of its buildings have long since been demolished, the surgeon's quarters remain, standing as the oldest known building in Bismarck. Camp Hancock may no longer be important as a post for the protection of westward settlers and pioneer railroad crews, or even as a federal weather station, yet the post remains an important historic landmark; reminding us all of the rugged spirit of those who dared to "go west."
Dakota Datebook written by Lane Sunwall
Sources
Snortland, J. Signe, ed. A Traveler's Companion to North Dakota State Historic Sites. Bismarck, ND: State Historical Society of North Dakota, 2002.
University, Tulane, "Horace Greeley" http://www.tulane.edu/~latner/Greeley.html (accessed September 30, 2009).
Williams, Robert Chadwell. Horace Greeley: Champion of American Freedom. New York: New York University Press, 2006.