Lot
42 
(Forts - Idaho Territory) Fort Halleck and Camp/Fort Collins Correspondence, 1863-65, group of six covers from Samuel M. with enclosed datelined letters comprising three from Fort Halleck, Idaho Terr. (1863-64) posted with Fort Halleck Neb. Terr. cds and three from Camp/Fort Collins (1864-65), two of later posted at Latham and Laporte Col. Terr., some interesting content concerning soldiering in the West during the Civil War, the "Fort Halleck I.T. Jan 29th 1864" letter says "…we had a general inspection of all the troops at this post (there being 200 troops here) by General Downing from denver city colorado territory…report…that we are a going back to the states in the sping…"; the "Camp Collins Col. July 22nd 1864" letter includes content concerning Indians: "When your letter came to hand I was scouting after the red faces (Indians) and was gone from camp 14 days…and there are about thirty-five (35) men out of our company out after the indians the have been five (5) days and it is hard to tell when they will get back.", the datelined "Fort Collins Col. Terr., April 11th 1865" letter reads "…hearing it is the glad tidings that this war woud soon be to an end may god speed the time for that time to come…The news in camp are that richmond is taken also that Lees army is captured with several of other Generals (bully for brigadeer General U.S. Grant)…Tomorrow morning I will start for the mountains to cut timbers to build a stockade correlle around the fort…yet we are not soldiering. we are working for uncle Sam by the month building forts and stockades and to eat some of uncles condemed pork and beans and other rotten food such as the quartermaster may issue…I suppose we will move farther east to blew river this spring to build a new fort (for that is our tract since I come in to the army)…we will then be in about two hundred miles of leavenworth city…"; covers with some stamp faults, etc., Fine and interesting Civil War correspondence from the western frontier, Letters from these two short-lived military installations are rare. Estimate $4,000 - 6,000.
Fort Halleck was a military outpost that existed in the 1860s along the Overland Trail and stage route in what was then the Territory of Idaho, now the U.S state of Wyoming. The fort was established in 1862 to protect emigrant travelers and stages transporting mail between Kansas and Salt Lake City, Utah and named for Major General Henry Wager Halleck, commander of the Department of the Missouri and later General-in-chief of the Union armies.
Fort Collins was founded as a military outpost of the United States Army in 1864. It succeeded a previous encampment, known as Camp Collins, on the Cache La Poudre River, near what is known today as Laporte. Camp Collins was erected during the Indian wars of the mid-1860s to protect the Overland mail route that had been recently relocated through the region. Travelers crossing the county on the Overland Trail would camp there, but a flood destroyed the camp in June 1864. Afterward, the commander of the fort wrote to the commandant of Fort Laramie in southeast Wyoming, Colonel William O. Collins, suggesting that a site several miles farther down the river would make a good location for the fort. The post was manned originally by two companies of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry and never had walls. Settlers began arriving in the vicinity of the fort nearly immediately. The fort was decommissioned in 1867.