Rooted in the Plains

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Summer Season Episode 2

Last week, we left you on a bluff above the Missouri River. November 1819. A Nebraska winter is closing in. Something about to go very, very wrong.

 In Part 2 of our Fort Atkinson series, we hear the story from the inside. Through the journal entries of our soldier stationed at the fort in the winter of 1819–1820, we follow the crisis as it unfolds and what would take 157 men before spring arrived.

 The details are real. They come straight from the historical record.

 We also look at what came next, how the soldiers who survived that winter went on to become the first large-scale farmers west of the Missouri River, and why Fort Atkinson is a place worth standing on.

For photos, maps, and a behind the scenes look at what we’re getting into this summer, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram.

Plan Your Visit
Fort Atkinson's next living history weekend is June 6th and 7th, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fort Atkinson State Historical Park, Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. Free with a Nebraska State Park entry permit.

Fort Atkinson State Historical Park — Nebraska Game & Parks

Friends of Fort Atkinson — fortatkinsononline.org


Want to Learn More

Diary of James Kennerly, 1823–1826. Missouri Historical Society Collections Vol. VI, No. 1 (1928).

Johnson, Sally A. “The Sixth’s Elysian Fields: Fort Atkinson on the Council Bluffs.” Nebraska History 40 (1959): 1–38.

Levine, Victor E. “Scurvy in Nebraska: The Epidemic of Scurvy at Cantonment Missouri, Nebraska, 1819–1820.” Journal of Nutrition, January 1955.

Nichols, Roger L. “Soldiers as Farmers: Army Agriculture in the Missouri Valley, 1818–1827.”

Reals, William J. “Scurvy at Fort Atkinson, 1819–1820.” Nebraska History.

Wesley, Edgar Bruce. “Life at a Frontier Post: Fort Atkinson, 1823–1826.” Journal of the American Military Institute Vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter 1939): 202–209.

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Rooted in the PlainsBy Nicole Blackstock