Ramsey County History – Spring 2021: “A Fort Snelling History Mystery: The Lost Barracks and the Twenty-Fifth US Infantry Regiment”

A Fort Snelling History Mystery: The Lost Barracks and the Twenty-Fifth US Infantry Regiment
Author: Matt Flueger

Historic Fort Snelling celebrated its bicentennial in 2020. After 200 years, it’s not surprising that a lot has been written about this place, which still stands today on a bluff at the convergence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. Despite all of the books, articles, and documentaries that have been produced about the military garrison, its role in US wars, and in decisions that affected the lives of the Dakota and a number of enslaved people in the nineteenth century, there are still untold histories to be shared. Author Matt Flueger presents an account of a “lost barracks” that stood for no more than a decade in the late 1800s and was quickly forgotten. And yet, it was home to a number of soldiers stationed at the fort between 1878 and 1888, including the members of the African American Twenty-Fifth US Infantry Regiment, who lived there the longest. Flueger’s work and discovery of a previously unknown photograph enhances the fort’s long history.
PDF of M. Flueger article