Fort Hartsuff, in spite of its brief life, played a telling role in the settlement and development of North Central Nebraska. Built and garrisoned in 1874, the Fort provided military security for the unsettled area and filled the void left by the abandonment of Fort Kearny, some one hundred miles to the south. Hartsuff offered much more than protection from the roving Sioux and Pawnee, however. To the settlers in its sphere it offered survival.

Newcomers had been streaming into the area since 1870 to take advantage of the free land offered by the Homestead Act. The land was good and save for the vagaries of Great Plains weather, the scarcity of wood and the occasional Indian scare, so was life. Then for two summers in a row, when crops and gardens just had a healthy start, disaster struck: disaster in the form of millions of swirling, swarming grasshoppers. Desolation was all they left behind them, and the despair of knowing there was no food and no money to buy food. Congress was alerted, charity drives sprang up across the East and one of the earliest government welfare programs began.

Fort Hartsuff was a part of the governmental efforts to provide relief. Men and horses from miles around were put to work hauling gravel from Gravel Creek four miles to the southeast, lime from Doc Beebe's ranch forty miles to the south, timber eight miles from Jones Canyon to the north. Under specification from the Army Quartermaster Department and the supervision of George A Clement, a contractor, the sodbusters became workers in grout.

Once completed the Fort remained an integral part of the homesteaders' lives, meeting psychological as well as physical needs. Hartsuff was a visible symbol of government, order and civilization in a land which was decidedly ungoverned, unruly and uncivilized. A haven in the time of trial, the Fort became the focal point for social activities and celebrations as well. The sturdy grout structures bespoke a confidence in the possibilities of the region and served as a drawing card for the North Loup Valley. Fort Hartsuff not only saved the settlers, it caused their numbers to grow.

While Fort Hartsuff was created in part to meet the homesteaders' needs, it was first and foremost a military post. Civil war hefoes figured in its early history; General O E C Ord selected the site for The Post on the Loup and in December, 1874 ordered the name changed to honor Major General George L Hartsuff. Three of the soldiers garrisoned at the Fort received the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry in the Battle of the Blowout, the one major encounter with the Sioux in the years. - NRHP, 26 January 1977