Fort Atkinson

During the summer months, on the first weekend of each month, Fort Atkinson State Park, near Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, comes alive with living history reenactors. On Labor Day Weekend, members of the 1st Rifles Regiment, the 6th U.S. Infantry and a variety of civilians went busily about their duties.

The main entrance to the fort is through the West Wall.

Another view of the West Wall showing the rifle ports in each room.

A view inside the fort, looking toward the south and west walls.

The Commander's Office.

This cannon is on the Rifles Regiment end of the fort.

Artillery fire every hour.

The Rifles Regiment drummer and piper.

Members of the Sixth Infantry.

One of the 6th Infantry barracks.

Daily life in the Sixth Infantry includes cleaning and polishing uniforms and...

handloading rifle cartridges and...

standing around drinking coffee,

while the laundresses washed their clothes. Where do I sign up?

Near the Park Visitor's Center, is this scene depicting Lewis and Clark's meeting with Indians at the Council Bluff, which was actually near the site of where Fort Atkinson would be established a few years later.

Inside the Visitor's Center is a great diorama showing the fort as it may have looked in the 1820s.