Fort Union Trading Post Historic Structures Report (Part II) Historical Data Section

Larpenteur's diary (1864-65) recorded the construction of several buildings by the company of troops occupying the fort that winter. Considering how quickly the troops erected these structures, they must have been crude buildings. Apparently, the first of these were the storerooms: Aug. 23, 1864: "Quarters master Commence building in the Fort making store rooms next to the picketts." Several weeks later, Larpenteur again referred to this: "The Soldiers commenced to saw and to weather board up their flour and stuff stored under the Fort gallery."

Between September 1 and 3, 1864, the soldiers set up a sawmill at the fort. Larpenteur's diary does not make clear if this was inside or outside the walls. A few weeks later the bourgeois noted, "Broke some of the Coggs of the Saw Mill." Not until the next spring was the mill again mentioned when Larpenteur said, "Got the saw mill in readyness."

The only notice of the Army's first root house at Fort Union came when it built its second one.

Larpenteur wrote in his diary Sept. 3, 1864, that the soldiers were "working on an other root house or an underground Store room." One week later, he added, "The Soldiers finished their Second root house." Larpenteur possibly used these structures after the troops left the post. He wrote in August 1865, that he "put all the pork & beef into the root house," as well as the salt supply.