Marcus Lee Hansen’s history of Fort Snelling examines the role of this frontier military post at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers from its founding in 1819 to its decommissioning as a military installation in 1858. Hansen documents the fort’s function in U.S. Indian policy, the fur trade, and the settlement of the upper Midwest, drawing on military records, correspondence, and other primary sources to reconstruct nearly four decades of frontier history.
Fort Snelling was the nerve center of the American presence in the upper Mississippi region during the crucial period of early settlement, and Hansen’s account illuminates this often-overlooked dimension of western expansion. Download this free EPUB for a rigorously researched history of a defining frontier institution.