The Julesburg Project

Finally started cleaning and conserving some of the 4,000 artifacts we’ve recovered over the last five years. We are using electrolysis to clean off the rust and grime. It’s helps make the artifacts appear more like they were in the nineteenth century. Thanks 🙏 to George Cromwell for educating us on the process!! Just took us awhile to get the needed equipment but now we are on a roll.

These pictures are some of what we’ve worked on the last few weeks. Any ideas on what sone of these are let us know.

The Main Battle:

After racing out the two to three miles to defend the civilians in the wagon train near the C&B Ranch, the men of the 7th Iowa began to pursue the smaller group of Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota warriors that had attacked the wagon train. In doing so, according to the letters home by members of F Company, the &th Iowa pursued the warriors to the southeast an additional three or four miles up the bluffs and into the sand hills.

In their pursuit the broke into three detachments or squads, likely each pursuing a group of the warriors up an individual finger coming down towards the river. As they continued the pursuit, one of the detachments noticed two additional warriors appear from behind a bluff well ahead of the warriors being chased. What happened next is unknown and how long the initial battle took is not known so we can only speculate that on seeing the other warriors the detachments halted to assess the situation.

We do know, from George Bent, and the accounts of the 7th Iowa that moments later the entire sand bluffs south of the river came alive with warriors 1,200-1,500 in all from various bands of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota. Shortly afterwards they descended on the three detachments inflicting heavy casualties. By the time retreat was ordered and the detachments and Captain O'Brien behind them made it back to the wagon train site, where Colonel Summers had remained, the Company had already suffered 12 men killed confirmed killed.

As they were in danger of being overrun, Captain O'Brien was told to return to the post and retrieve the artillery to help cover them on the entire units retreat back to the fort. He fought his way back, retrieved the artillery, and used it to help drive off the superior number of warriors so the remainder of the unit could escape back to the station and ultimately the post. Fighting their way back they took with them the civilians that remained in at the trains and station.

Philo Holcomb, sometime in the late morning telegraphed to Denver the events as he knew them. His strength of the Cavalry was a little off as he was the operator at the stage station.

"JULESBURG, 7TH—A train was attacked this morning about three miles below this post by a band of Indians numbering seventy-five. Two white men were killed and four wounded. Two Indians were killed. One hundred soldiers well armed and mounted are now in pursuit. The Indians are retreating to the Bluffs. Particulars soon. HOLCOMB, Operator."

You can see at this point he had no idea of the complex attack orchestrated by the combined Tribal force. If not for the two over eager warriors that sprung the ambush before the cavalry was in the kill zone, it is likely the entire command would have been decimated. Instead of ending the day with 15 dead troopers, it might well have been 40-50 dead troopers, an overrun fort, dozens of dead civilians. More on the historical fiction of what ifs, in a later post.

The Battle Begins:

In the early morning hours of January 7th, 1865, while it was still the dark of night, the stage carrying the mail was headed west down the Overland Trail towards Julesburg Station. Shortly after descending the Devil's Dive, the steep drop from the upper terrace of the sand hills down to the lower terrace immediately above the South Platte River, the stage was attacked by a small party of warriors from the combined Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota force. The exact location of the attack is lost to time.

The stage with its powerful set of horses was able to outrun the attack and dash the 6-7 miles due west to the stage station, Julesburg Station. Upon arriving, the stage drive then raced by horse a mile west to alert the cavalry stationed at Camp Rankin of the attack. As the stage was safe at the station, Captain Nicholas O'Brien, Commander of Company F, 7th Iowa Cavalry declined to send troops out to hunt for the Native American warriors in the dark of night.

With their first attack (in military terms their initial supporting attack or feint) a failure to draw the calvary out, the warriors now descended on the wagon train camped just east of C&B Ranch. In the attack two civilians were killed and four more were injured. As the attack was only a mile or so away, the employees of the station could hear the gun fire and sounds of the battle.

As a result, word of this second attack quickly reached Captain O'Brien. However, this time as day was breaking and civilians were under attack, Captain O'Brien order his troops to their saddles. Due to tastings from his regiment, he could muster less than 40 troopers to head to the defense of the wagon train. As he departed the post and headed east down the trail, he was accompanied by his Regimental Commander, Colonel Summers and Captain Murphy, a fellow company commander who had escorted Colonel Summers from Alkali Station in Nebraska to Camp Rankin in the days prior.

Soon, Company F would be joining the fight, but doing so without any of its artillery as its two mountain howitzers were left at the fort.

Tonight, just before midnight on the 6th of January the Town of Julesburg lies a sleep except for the cars and trucks running up and down Interstate 76 to the south of town and the same on Interstate 80 north of town and of course the frequent freight trains running down the Union Pacific main line, the old transcontinental railroad, that pulled the town north of the river as the tracks were laid to connect the Nation together by iron rails from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

158-years ago, the original Julesburg was a small cluster of buildings centered around the Overland Stage Company's stage station. The exact number is unclear but somewhere between 7-10 is likely fairly accurate from the 1860 census and other accounts. The station was located on the south side of the Platte, about a mile southeast of where Lodgepole Creek enters the South Platte. Directly south of this confluence was Camp Rankin, the garrison built by F Company of the 7th Iowa Cavalry. One mile east of the station (Julesburg I) and two miles east of Camp Rankin was the Connelly and Bullin Ranche where a a wagon train headed to the states was camped nearby for the winter. A few miles beyond to the east, down the overland Trail was the Devil's Dive where the "road" took a precarious drop down off the bench as the road headed towards Julesburg Station.

All of the people at these sites 158 years ago, had no idea that their world was about to change and they would become the focal point of the complex operation that would be conducted by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota bands in Colorado and Nebraska as they banded together in battle to extract retribution for the Sand Creek Massacre, but more importantly, to acquire supplies needed by their people and especially the survivors of the massacre.

Following along throughout the day as we will highlight little known parts of the First Battle of Julesburg this weekend and see how we developed this more complete understanding of the battle over our research the last five years.

And check back in the coming weeks as we do a little post production and make a more complete video to tell the story of the battle.

And our apologies for the quality of the videos and photos. Its cold out there at midnight (abt 25' F) and even with the full moon it still hard to get good imagery. But we shouldn't complain, it was colder and a little darker in 1865 as the full moon that January wasn't until 11 January.

Congratulations to Riley Limbaugh for winning the Anthropology and Geography Department’ s award for capstone projects. He did GPR work on the old post cemetery location.

One area related to Fort Sedgwick we know needs more study is the post cemetery.

The soldiers and family members from the Fort Sedgwick cemetery are now interred at Fort McPherson National Cemetery near Maxwell, Nebraska. Fitting they rest there, as it was the 7th Iowa Cavalry that built what became known as Camp Cottonwood and then Fort McPherson when they arrived in Nebraska to guard the overland emigrant trails.

One area of the cemetery's history that not a lot is known is the details of the removal of the remains from Fort Sedgwick to the National Cemetery. Period newspaper accounts and the military records shed some light on the matter. Appears the soldiers from Fort Sedgwick were the first to arrive at the newly established National Cemetery in the fall fo 1873.

Sadly, the majority of the remains received at Fort McPherson were listed as unknown. Record keeping on post cemeteries was poor in the 1860s at best. In Army inspection reports from when the post in operation reported that a majority of the graves were already unknown. Wood markers decayed or were burnt in fires and apparently no plot records were kept by the post.

Hopefully in the coming months we can expand this story in much more details as we dig into the records at the National Archives and related non-invasive fieldwork.

This weekend we took The Julesburg Project international with a presentation and poster at the 11th Biennial Fields of Conflict Conference. The conference was hosted (virtually) by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and specifically, by the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology. The conference brings together archaeologists from North American and Europe who's work is focused on conflict and battlefield archaeology regardless of era. Presentations covered a 2000+ year period and dealt with sites from the United States and across Europe.

Had a good night in Steamboat Springs talking about my research on The Julesburg Campaign and Powell expeditions for the Treads of Pioneers Museum’s History Happy Hour series. Can’t be the view for an evening talk and it’s always good to be west of the Divide.

While not posting much the past few weeks, it has been a busy month for the Project. Last week presented on the Project to the Loveland Archaeological Society and the Eureka Club (home of the HART project volunteers) in Denver. Also recorded a podcast for “A Life in Ruins” that airs on Monday.

Have you ever wondered why the War Department changed the name of Camp Rankin to Fort Sedgwick?

Well, the likely reason is few senior officers in the U.S. Army had as much history with operations in Colorado as did the late Major General John Sedgwick. After earning a promotion to Major in the war with Mexico, Major Sedgwick accompanied Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner on his expedition against the Cheyenne in 1857-58 from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. On that expedition he lead one of the two columns of the expedition.

A few years later he returned on a second expedition to Colorado to establish a new military post which later became Fort Lyons. While in command of the post one of his junior officers was J.E.B. Stuart and the two would sign as witnesses to the Treaty of Fort Wise in 1861 that reduced the size of the Cheyenne and Arapaho lands in Colorado.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, the two men parted ways to serve on opposite sides of the war. Both would become noted Generals for their side. Sedgwick would again serve under Major General Sumner in the II Corps at the Battle of Antietam. He too would later reach the rank of Major General and was killed in action in 1864.

As such with his ties to Colorado it seems clear why the War Department and the U.S. Army chose him to be the namesake of their fort on the South Platte River in the Colorado Territory. Sumner had already had a post named for him in 1862 in New Mexico. After its primary use as a a prison for the Navajo and other Native Americans it was abandoned and bought by a rancher. It was in his house that Billy the Kid met his fate; he is buried at the fort.

A little more Colorado history, Major General Sumner's sons both became cavalry officers (eventually general officers) as well and had ties to Colorado serving at the Battle of Summit Springs in 1869 and the response to the Battle of Milk Creek & Meeker Massacre in 1879.

Just to change things up, here is a little poem from the February 1st, 1860 issue of the Western Mountaineer published in Golden City. While no way to know, it is more than likely the author crossed past Julesburg Station, Valley Station and the rest of the trail on his journey to the mines.

Here is a little flashback to the first raid on Julesburg on January 7th, 1865. Seems that supplies and money were not all that was lost in the raid. The Kountze brothers last two land warrants that were on the stage being delivered to them. They placed an add in the News in May 1865 about their loss. They became financiers and land merchants in Denver.

It is unclear when Jules Beni first arrived at the Upper California Crossing to establish a trading post and when the area became known as "Julesburg." What is know is that in the Spring of 1859 the area was still referred to as the campsite opposite Lodge Pole Creek. There was no mention at the time of it in May 1859 as Julesburg or even their being a notable trading post at that location.

Below is an extract of the fourth issue of the Rocky Mountain News published on May 28, 1859 that describes the best stops on the Road to Denver from Omaha. The issue, like many before it included a map of the routes to the Gold Fields. The map was from a guidebook authored earlier in the year by the paper's founder and editor William Newton Byers. Byers, his partners, and his brother-in-laws had travelled the road to Denver from Omaha a few months earlier as they moved the press for the News to Denver.

However, Byers had published the book before ever going to Colorado. He did however travel the Oregon Trail in the 1850s as a government surveyor. He is reported to have run the first length of chain in what became the State of Washington. The map also appeared int eh first issue of the News on 23 April 1859.

The location of Julesburg was finally settled in 1874 when the Wheeler Survey spent sometime in Julesburg III taking astronomical observations. To do so, the survey emplaced a stone marker from which they took a series of readings. The marker, one of six that was located in Colorado. The Marker, minus its instrument table top slab, still stands. It is one of three known to remain.

The marker is important as it clearly proved that Julesburg III (Weir Siding) was located south of the Colorado Territorial - Nebraska State Line. This settled a simmering debate that had waged on since the Colorado Territory was born from the Kansas and Nebraska Territory a decade plus before.

Have you ever wondered why Julesburg Station (Julesburg I) was frequently reported in period reports as being in the Nebraska Territory? Well, here is the answer? When Jules Beni arrived and opened his trading post at the Upper California Crossing he did so in the Nebraska Territory. Back in 1859 the Territorial divide between Nebraska and Kansas was the current line between those two states. Note that at the time, the Utah Territory went east to the Continental Divide. And Minnesota went west to the Missouri River.

It didn't change until Colorado became its own territory on 28 February 1861 when the new territory was carved out of both the Nebraska and Kansas territories. The territories can be seen on the below 1855 Colton map of the Nebraska and Kansas Territories.

The debate over the location *territorially" continued until the 1870s when the location of Julesburg III was settled by the Wheeler Survey in 1874. More on the that in the coming days.

There are many things to be frustrated about in our federal government, but two of its treasures are the National Archives and the Library of Congress. Thankfully, digitization is opening these treasures to all of us from our homes.

In 1859 Daniel A Jenks made a trip west headed back to California to be a miner. During his travels he made a number of drawings of the trip. They are simply amazing and some of the earliest representations of sites in Colorado in existence. They are attached here with their captions from the Library of Congress.

As our research covers sites all along the Overland Trail and Denver Road, here is a quick look at Sterling, Logan County, Colorado through the Library of Congress' Sanborn Fire Insurance Map collection. I dropped the last couple years of this series as Sterling had boomed and they take 11 map sheets.

In the new world we are living in these days, it appears we all have a lot more time for TV, the internet, and social media. As such, I thought I'd broaden the scope of the material we post. One benefit of historical archaeology is the rich archival records that exist and help contextualize the artifacts and features found at sites. In doing that archival research lots of material is encountered that is interesting but not immediately relevant to the topic at hand.

One such interesting set of documents are the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. When put together you can see how towns transformed over time. Fortunately, the Library Congress has made the majority of these maps available online. The set of pictures below are the Sanborn Maps for Julesburg showing the town in 1893, 1904, 1908, 1913, and 1921.

Great weekend in Pueblo at the 42nd annual meeting of the Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists (CCPA). Two outstanding undergrads presented posters on the work they have been doing as part of the research team. Elena Haverluk highlighted her drawings of artifacts and Dan Hemler presented on the GIS work he’s done with artifacts collected last summer at the stage station site.

And all this at their first conference.

Their work was well received. So much so that they swept the undergraduate poster competition and helped CSU win 5 of 6 graduate and undergraduate awards. Dan was the runner-up and Elena the winner.

Thanks to the Fort Sedgwick Museum, the Center for Mountain and Plains Archaeology (CMPA), George Cromwell, and Tom Westfall for access to the artifacts and data used in their posters.

This week we took the Julesburg Project to the east coast and presented a poster on the work we did this past summer at Julesburg Station and our recent LiDAR work on Camp Rankin/Fort Sedgwick. The presentation was at the Society for Historical Archaeology's annual conference. Had a number of discussions about the project with leading military / conflict archaeologists. Looking forward to implementing their advice in the coming weeks and months.

Another focus of the ongoing research is to apply modern technology to understanding the battlefield. Our latest endeavor is use LIDAR to identify sites and visualize the battlefield.

One of the products produced through processing the data in the Global Mapper program is a 3D view of the terrain. The photo with arrows is a closer view of the area where Camp Rankin (red arrow), Julesburg stage station (yellow arrow), and the Native American staging area (orange arrow) were located. The unmarked is a wider view of the area. Both are looking southeast from the Platte River area west of Ovid, Colorado. The the third 3D visualization is looking east down the South Platte from the Logan-Sedgwick County Line towards the state line with Nebraska where the Platte leaves Colorado.

The 3D visualization tool is based on the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) we produced for the Platte River valley through Sedgwick County, Colorado. The DEM is colored photo of Sedgwick County. The LIDAR data was provided by the State of Colorado. The import of the LIDAR data is the grey photo of the county. It consists of over 12.7 billion points of elevation data.

In the future, we will use further processing steps to identify the potential remains of posts, stations, ranches, and even the Overland Trail / Denver Road itself.

155 years ago today, January 7th, 1865, the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota initiated their first winter and combined campaign against the U.S. Army, settlers, and emigrants along the Overland Trail in response to Colonel Chivington's attack on the Cheyenne and Arapaho village at Sand Creek in what quickly became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. They chose for their initial attack the Stage Station at Julesburg and the nearby Camp Rankin garrisoned by F Co, 7th Iowa Volunteer Cavalry.

Their attack was well designed and planned not our of simple vengeance but instead out of necessity. They chose Julesburg Station as it was the regional warehouse for the Overland Stage Company and well stocked. As a result of the attack at Sand Creek the Cheyenne and Arapaho survivors needed supplies to survive winter on the plains.

In the battle that day, 14 soldiers were reported killed. LT Eugene Ware (who was away on the day of the battle) reported in his book their names as follows, writing:

The number of men killed that forenoon was fourteen, whose names were as follows:

Sergeant, Alanson Hanchett Corporal, William H. Gray
Corporal, Anthony Koons Corporal, Walter B. Talcott
George Barnett Hiram W. Brundage.
Henry H. Hall David Ishman
James Jordan Davis Lippincott
Edson D. Moore Amos C. McArthur
Thomas Scott Joel Stebbins

After the battle, the men were buried in the camp's cemetery south of the post. In the late nineteenth century the men were disinterred and moved to the Fort McPherson National Cemetery near the old Camp Cottonwood. Unfortunately, by the time the men were reinterred, many had to be buried as unknown. The remain in such status today.

Part of the project's recent work is to identify the records related to the 7th Iowa Volunteer Cavalry in the State of Iowa's Archives. Attached are some of the documents located by the project's researcher in Iowa. The documents are the inventories conducted by the company on the fallen soldiers personal effects sent to the Adjutant General of Iowa, the clothing ledger for the soldiers, a listing of casualties from the official roster of battles and casualties for the regiment, and a telegram sent from the post in February 1865. The photo is of Colonel Summers the regimental commander at the time of the battle.

When Camp Rankin was established in 1864 by the 7th Iowa Volunteer Cavalry, a military reservation was also established for four miles in each direction from the post's flagpole. As the residents of Julesburg Station had no legal title to the land (it was technically on the Cheyenne and Arapaho treaty lands) the residents were forced to abide by military rules on alcohol, gambling, and prostitution - which was bad for business. In the aftermath of the raids by the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota in 1865, the town was rebuilt 4.1 miles east of the flagpole an outside military rules. Julesburg II was short lived due to the arrival of the railroad in 1867 and the creation of Julesburg III near the Union Pacific tracks.

The attached map was prepared by the Department of the Platte and shows the location of Fort Sedgwick, the military reservation, and Julesburg I, Julesburg II, and Julesburg III. The old ranch depicted east of Julesburg I and south of the wagon road is like the Conley and Bullins which also played a key role in the opening scenes of the first raid on Julesburg Station on January 7th, 1865.

The map is undated but by the location and names of Julesburg and the post it had to be created between 1867 when the Transcontinental Railroad reached Colorado and likely before 1871 when the Fort was closed. It also must be before 1882 when Julesburg was established as Denver Junction at the current town's location when the railroad to Denver and the UP mainline was completed.

Map courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Government Land Office (GLO) Records website.

For the past few months the Julesburg Project has had a researcher working in the State Historical Society of Iowa and the Iowa State Archives in Des Moines and Iowa City, Iowa researching the 7th Iowa Volunteer Cavalry. The investment has paid and we are now getting in a lot of primary source data. Attached is one example related to the Battle of Julesburg on 7 January 1865, it is the inventory of personal property for one of the soldiers killed in the battle.

We will be posting more in coming weeks. The record is from the Iowa Adjutant General's files.