On August 15, 1865, Colonel Kidd's column selected the site of the fort on a bluff above the Powder River near the crossing of the Bozeman Trail.

That month, Fort Connor was the jumping-off point for the soldiers that fought at the Battle of the Tongue River on August 29, 1865 in present-day Sheridan County, Wyoming.

The Bozeman Trail, built as a way around the Bighorn Mountains, crossed the Powder River at Fort Connor, offering emigrants traveling on it protection.

[1]On June 28, 1866 Colonel Henry Beebe Carrington and about 700 men of the 18th U.S. Infantry reached Fort Reno, relieving the galvanized yankees.

[1] In 1868 the Fort Laramie Treaty ended Red Cloud's War and essentially ceded the Powder River Country to the Lakota Sioux.

During the Great Sioux War, Brigadier General George Crook's 883 men of the Big Horn Expedition returned to Fort Reno in March, 1876, finding only some adobe walls and building debris.

Nevertheless, Crook used the site as a supply base for 15 days, leaving the expedition's wagons and Companies C, and I, of the 4th United States Infantry Regiment, under the overall command of Captain Edwin M. Coates.

On March 5 Crook's command fought Indian warriors in the Fort Reno Skirmish directly across the river from the abandoned post.