, photographer with the
Simpson Expedition Established in July 1858 by a U.S. Army detachment under the command of Brevet Brig. Gen.
Albert Sidney Johnston, Camp Floyd was named for then Secretary of War
John B. Floyd. The detachment consisted of more than 3,500 military and civilian employees, including cavalry, artillery, infantry and support units. This unit, the largest single troop concentration then in the United States, was sent by President
James Buchanan to stop a perceived
Mormon rebellion, which came to be known as the
Utah War. From
Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, the army marched to
Fort Bridger,
Wyoming where it spent the winter of 1857. Troops arrived in
Salt Lake City, Utah in June 1858. Soon after their arrival, troops settled in the Cedar Valley area and eventually Fairfield, where 400 buildings were constructed by November 1858. A series of photographs of Camp Floyd, taken by
Samuel C. Mills in January 1859, show the post as a cluster of adobe buildings including barracks, officers quarters, warehouses and other sundry structures. Enough civilians soon followed to increase the town size to 7000, almost half that of Salt Lake City. The rebellion never took place, leaving the army with routine
garrison duty that included protecting the stagecoach and Pony Express routes, preventing Indian marauding, and mapping and surveying responsibilities. Supplying the large garrison, from Fort Leavenworth, was costly. It was rumored to be an attempt by Secretary of War Floyd (a known southern sympathizer) to drain the federal treasury. A contract with the firm of
Russell, Majors and Waddell for delivery of of freight required 3,500 wagons, 40,000 oxen, 1,000 mules and more than 4,000 men. This same company formed the Pony Express, which had a station in Fairfield. After Secretary of War Floyd resigned on Dec. 29, 1860 (becoming a Confederate), Camp Floyd was renamed
Fort Crittenden, after Kentucky's Senator
John J Crittenden, who worked to prevent Kentucky's secession from the Union. Camp Floyd/Crittenden was abandoned in July 1861 with the garrison being called east for the
American Civil War. Equipment and buildings were sold, destroyed or transported. All that remain today are the military cemetery and one commissary building. Two months after the army's departure, only 18 families remained in Fairfield. A area was listed on the NRHP as
Camp Floyd Site November 11, 1974. The only vestige of the post in 1974 was a cemetery. ==Fairfield District School==