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Fort Totten - History

Fort Totten Soldiers with Gattling Gun

Fort Totten is one of the best-preserved frontier military posts in the United States. The fort was built between 1868 and 1873 as a military outpost, but it actually served for most of its history as an Indian boarding school. The original garrison policed the surrounding military reservation, guarded overland mail and transportation routes, and oversaw Sioux Indians living on the Devils Lake Sioux Indian Reservation. Units stationed here included detachments of the famous 7th U.S. Cavalry. Sixteen of the original structures used by the U.S. military between 1867 and 1890 still stand at Fort Totten State Historic Site.

Decommissioned as a military post in December 1890, Fort Totten became an in­dustrial school for Indian children in January 1891. The military buildings were adapted to the various needs of the school. Sioux children were the first students at the board­ing school but were later joined by Chippewa children from the Turtle Mountain In­dian Reservation and others. Students received vocational and academic training in such skills as seamstress/tailoring, harness and shoe making, baking, farming, dairy­ing, printing, and carpentry.

The Fort Totten school functioned as a tuberculosis preventorium between 1935 and 1940, a five-year experimental program to care for and educate children with tuberculosis. After 1940 Fort Totten returned to its day and boarding school function until 1959 when the facility and students moved to a new school just east of the site. Fort Totten became a state historic site in 1960.

Hours:
8 am - 5 pm daily, from May 16 - September 15.
September 16 - May 15, weekdays by appointment.

Contact Us:
Phone: (701) 766-4441
Email: shstotten@nd.gov
P.O. Box 224
Fort Totten ND 58335