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We made another trip to the fort and searched the areas where we
might expect to find the remains of the stump of the post, based on
all the possible locations we plotted. But a thorough search came up
empty. We left the post where we found it, securing it off the ground
but not marking it in any way. We left all the monuments as we found
them. We could not determine if Wheeler had made a bad call or a bad
measurement. In any case we simply could not find any more remains
for corner IV.

In June of 1870, the Army recommended to the War Department that
the buildings at Fort Churchill be tendered to the State or sold at pu-
bic auction. The State apparently declined the offer so the buildings
were sold at auction for $750. The military reservation as surveyed by
Lieutenant Wheeler was then turned over to the General Land Office.

The remains of some of the forty-six Union soldiers buried there were
reinterred in the Lone Mountain Cemetery in Carson City in 1884. Oth-
ers were reinterred at the Presidio in San Francisco. The fort’s cem-
etery still holds the graves of the Buckland family. They bought the
fort’s buildings for the doors, windows, timbers, etc. The Buckland
Station, located at Weeks, Nevada, was built from the wood from Fort
Churchill. In the early 1930’s the Nevada Chapter of the Daughters
7
of the American Revolution moved to preserve the fort’s remains. As
a result, 200 acres were transferred to the DAR, who then deeded it
back to the State of Nevada for the purpose of creating a state park. In
1935, led by the National Park Service, workers with the Civilian Con-
servation Corps (part of the New Deal’s Work Relief Program) labored
for two years to stabilize the remaining ruins. Facilities for camping
and day use were built as well as a visitor’s center which still houses
Paul Pace with the cairn monument at corner III
the museum and offices. In 1957, the fort became part of the Nevada
State Park System.

As for Lieutenant Wheeler, he went on to survey many other posts in the West. The post at Fort Halleck, for example, shows the paral-
lelogram shape he used at Fort Churchill.
Lieutenant Wheeler went on to lead the vast United
States Geographical Surveys West of the 100th Merid-
ian. According to the Army’s Corps of Engineers Head-
quarters website, “Based on (General) Humphreys’
orders, Wheeler’s mission was as much a scientific
and economic expedition as it was a mapping survey,
so Wheeler hired professionals in a range of scientific
disciplines—astronomy, botany, chemistry, ethnol-
ogy, geology, paleontology, and zoology. Additionally,
Wheeler employed topographers and surveyors to
supplement his subordinate Army officers. During the
survey’s fieldwork, the number of civilians it employed
greatly outweighed the number of Army officers: 115
scientists, surveyors, and their assistants, compared
to only 27 military officers.”

It was a monumental effort spanning nine years. The
result was a full atlas with maps and illustrations of
the vast area that Wheeler and his team mapped. Also
included was a comprehensive report on all aspects of
the lands traversed, including their natural history.
Screen shot from our Google Earth plot showing inconsistencies with
the survey at Corner IV

7 Buckland Station was acquired by Nevada Division of State Parks in 1994
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