Work actually commenced September 10, 1820, and went steadily ahead until October, 1822, when the post was first occupied. During this time Colonel Snelling was in command and his regiment was engaged in the work.
For two years after it had been finished the post was known as Fort St. Anthony—at Colonel Snelling’s suggestion—after the falls which are near the place, but, in 1824, it was visited by General Scott, who suggested to the War Department that the name should be changed to that which it bears to-day as a compliment to its builder.
The defences and some of the store-houses and shops were built of stone, but the quarters for the soldiers were log huts until after the Mexican War. The huts have now given way to comfortable barracks of modern construction, but the stone construction and the shops remain to-day as they were when the fort was far distant from civilization.
During the Civil War the fort was a concentration point for volunteers. In 1878 a plan of enlargement to accommodate a full regiment was entered upon in accordance with the policy then inaugurated by the War Department of having the soldiers of the country concentrated at a few points rather than scattered through a number of small posts.
While Fort Snelling has never seen active service itself it has had an active existence as a distribution point for those posts which were in conflict with the enemy during the United States’ occasional Indian Wars. During the serious Sioux outbreak of 1862 in Minnesota it was the head-quarters of the campaign against the Indians, though the fighting took place from subsidiary posts in contact with the red men.
For twenty years after its completion Fort Snelling was in the midst of the Sioux with no white neighbors except traders, agents of fur companies, refugees from civilization and disreputable hangers-on. In 1837 an enlargement of the military reserve and the coming of the first tide of white settlers who were to develop this country caused the eviction of this last class of dependents. One of the nearby squatters took his grog-shop to a point not far away. Around this point a settlement grew up. This settlement is now the proud city of St. Paul.