American School, 19th Century

Houses and buildings named (from top, clockwise): Hendershott; Lord; Lyons; Drake; Dandson; Crawford; Wessells; Lang; Gardner; Guard; Hospital on the extreme right; Store House; Quarter Master Stores.  In the river, a paddle-wheeler Nina.

Fort Randall was established on June 26, 1856 to provide protection to settlers and explorers along the Missouri River, in southern South Dakota and Northern Nebraska. The post also deterred white explorers from trespassing Indian reservations- as well as being an Army supply depot for the upper Missouri River.

The site for Fort Randall was selected by General William S. Harnay, and was named for Colonial Daniel Randall, Deputy Paymaster General of the Army.  Construction of the fort began in August 1856 and consisted of twenty-four buildings, housing 500 soldiers.

The fort protected lands between the Platte River in central Nebraska and Missouri River to the north- and their population's fur traders- as well as escorting wagon trains of settlers and explorers across the plains.

The Nebraska Territory was a slave-free region- where the Missouri compromise of 1820 was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

Gary K. Grice, History of Weather Observations, Fort Randall, South Dakota 1856-1892, Sept. 2006.