Caisson

Inside museum at Ft. Churchill State Park, Nevada, USA. 1860s vintage. Ft. Churchill was built in the early 1860s to (a) intimidate Confederate sympathizers; and (b) intimidate the local Paiutes. It succeeded on both counts. The fort was abandoned by 1870 and sold for scrap. The timbers were salvaged, but the rest of the buildings, made of adobe, fell into ruin. The well-defined "ruins" seen now are actually 1930s restorations--the original buildings are now just heaps of mud. (There are some pix elsewhere in this collection.) The area is now a Nevada state park.