Fort Atkinson - The People Who Keep It Alive

Fort Atkinson - The People Who Keep It Alive

The fort is still standing. And so are the people who keep its story alive.  In the final episode of our Fort Atkinson summer series, we go to the source: the volunteers who show up on the first weekend of every month, put on the uniforms, and bring the 1820s back to life for everyone who walks through the gates.  A soldier. A blacksmith. A tinsmith. A weaver. And Andrew, our guide through this whole series, is back on the bluff where it all began. I asked them all the same questions: What do people get wrong about life at this fort? What moment from a visitor has stayed with you? And why does this story still matter?  Enjoy.  Fort Atkinson Living History Weekend runs May through October, the first weekend of every month. Fort Atkinson State Historical Park, Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. Free with a Nebraska State Park entry permit.  For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram.

Fort Atkinson - We Are Still Here...

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 [https://outdoornebraska.gov/location/fort-atkinson/] Friends of Fort Atkinson — fortatkinsononline.org [https://www.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.

Fort Atkinson - The Fort at the Edge of the World

Summer Season Episode 1 On a bluff above the Missouri River, 200 miles from the nearest American settlement, the United States built its largest military post in 1819. Nearly a thousand people called it home: soldiers, officers, families. They were sent to project American power into the frontier, hold back British fur traders, and keep the peace with the surrounding nations: the Pawnee, the Omaha, the Sioux, the Arikara.  In this episode, we step inside the walls with Andrew, a living history re-enactor and Friend of Fort Atkinson, to get a feel for what daily life actually looked like. The rations. The whiskey. The discipline, the isolation, and the particular strangeness of being a soldier at the edge of the known American world. And we leave you with a question. It was November 1819. A Nebraska winter is closing in. Something was about to go very, very wrong. Find out next week (May 27, 2026) in Part 2.  For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, 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 [https://outdoornebraska.gov/location/fort-atkinson/] Friends of Fort Atkinson — fortatkinsononline.org [https://www.fortatkinsononline.org/] Want to Learn More Johnson, Sally A. “The Sixth’s Elysian Fields: Fort Atkinson on the Council Bluffs.” Nebraska History 40 (1959): 1–38. 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. Diary of James Kennerly, 1823–1826. Missouri Historical Society Collections Vol. VI, No. 1 (1928).

Deep Roots, Wide Open Future

Two years ago, I took a walk around a lake. The tallgrass was moving in the wind, and if I was lucky, a red-winged blackbird. That's where this podcast started. In this episode, I close out Season 2, eight episodes across the Great Plains, from South Dakota to Oklahoma and look ahead to what's coming next. I share a bit about how Rooted in the Plains got started and where I want to see it go. Including something I'm really excited about for this fall. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to get involved? * Partner with the podcast: rootedintheplains@outlook.com or Instagram @rootedintheplains [https://www.instagram.com/rootedintheplains/] * Share your Plains story: My Plains Story [https://forms.gle/YCNDRB9giMPXgCj38]

Off the Record

Every episode leaves something on the research desk. The details that didn't quite fit. The rabbit holes that led somewhere unexpected. The questions the records wouldn't answer. Today we're opening the files. In this episode, we go back to three stories from Season 2, the ones I couldn't stop thinking about long after the microphone was off. A Nebraska son hired to evaluate the Carnegie library program, who told an uncomfortable truth and watched his report disappear. A sacred building in Deadwood's Chinatown that burned under suspicious circumstances, and the case that was never closed. And two researchers documenting the same Indigenous plant knowledge at the same time, through completely different methods, producing completely different records. Three episodes. Three things I couldn't let go of. For photos, maps, and glimpses of the past, follow @rootedintheplains on Instagram. Want to learn more? * Erickson, David L. "Melvin Randolph Gilmore, Incipient Cultural Ecologist: A Biographic Analysis." Master's thesis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1971. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/opentheses/60/ * Fosha, Rose Estep, and Christopher Leatherman. "The Chinese Experience in Deadwood, South Dakota." Historical Archaeology 42, no. 3 (2008): 97–110.  * Latham, Joyce M. "Clergy of the Mind: Alvin S. Johnson, William S. Learned, the Carnegie Corporations, and the American Library Association." The Library Quarterly 80, no. 3 (July 2010): 249–265. * Pollak, Oliver B. A State of Readers: Nebraska's Carnegie Libraries. Lincoln, NE: J & L Lee Co., 2005, pp. 165–172.  * Waheenee, Edward Goodbird, and Gilbert Livingstone Wilson. Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987.  * Wong, Edith C., Eileen French, and Rose Estep Fosha. "Deadwood's Pioneer Merchant: Wong Fee Lee and His Wing Tsue Bazaar." South Dakota History 39, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 283–335.