Fort Holes

Fort Holes. . About one block east of this marker, near the site of the Gray Laboratory School, stood Fort Holes, for a brief time a reminder of the panic accompanying the Sioux uprising of 1862. As fighting flared, frightened settlers streamed into nearby villages, where stockades were erected., Fort Holes was one of many such stockades. Named for Samuel Holes, a captain of militia whose advice had been followed in its construction and who helped build it, the Fort overlooked the river, the flats to the south and the river landing at the foot of what is now Tenth Street., Jane Grey Swisshelm described the Fort. “The outer wall is a framework put together and planked up and down the outside from ten to twelve feet and shelving outward so that it cannot be scaled with a ladder. The wall is three feet thick at the base and one and one-half at the height of six or seven feet and filled with soil….There are two entrances at which are hung heavy gates…”, Fort Holes never was used by St. Cloud residents because the danger of attack faded. It did house refugees from the countryside. By 1864, the Fort was rapidly disappearing as new settlers carried off the lumber. By 1875 it had vanished.