Fort Totten was one of roughly 150 forts constructed across the western frontier during the American Indian Wars. Its origins trace to the aftermath of the Dakota War of 1862, when displaced Dakota bands -- Sisseton and Wahpeton people who now form the Spirit Lake Tribe -- were relocated to the area around Devils Lake. Major General John Pope had proposed a line of forts across the newly formed Dakota Territory in the mid-1860s, but he canceled plans for a Devils Lake post in the fall of 1864. The idea resurfaced in early 1867, driven by a new treaty that established two reservations: Lake Traverse to the south and Devils Lake in the north. The latter would encompass the southern shore of the lake. Fort Totten was officially established by the Secretary of War on July 17, 1867, and named for Joseph Gilbert Totten, head of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Its first missions were not combat operations but relief efforts -- the Spirit Lake Tribe had endured severe hardship, and the brutal winter of 1866-1867 had been especially devastating.

When the fort closed in 1890, its buildings were repurposed as the Fort Totten Indian Industrial School, a Native American boarding school that would operate until 1959. The transition was grimly efficient: military architecture designed for discipline became educational architecture designed for assimilation. Most pupils came from western North Dakota and Montana. Local families at Spirit Lake often preferred St. Michael's Mission, finding the school's rigid structure and English-only curriculum alienating. The students themselves supplied much of the manual labor to maintain the crumbling brick buildings. Several original structures were demolished during the boarding school years -- the dead house, well house, a guardhouse, and half of a mess hall. A gymnasium rose over the spot where barracks once stood. Between 1935 and 1939, the school also served as a preventorium for Dakota children suffering from tuberculosis, adding yet another layer of institutional purpose to the same set of walls.

The Great Depression gutted the school's finances, and it never recovered. By its final years, the institution had partially converted to a day school, though dormitories remained for boarding students. On March 6, 1959, Fort Totten ceased operations entirely. The Bureau of Indian Affairs transferred the property to the State Historical Society of North Dakota, which took ownership in 1960. Sixteen original buildings survive around the central square, forming the core of what is now a state historic site. The Fort Totten Little Theater, built during the boarding school era, still hosts performances. In 2001 and 2002, one of the former officers' quarters was restored and converted into the Totten Trail Historic Inn, a bed and breakfast that doubles as a conference venue. Visitors today can walk the same parade ground where soldiers once drilled and children once lined up for inspection, two very different eras compressed into the same physical space.

The lake that gives the fort its setting holds its own layered history. The Dakota name for it, Mni Wakan, means sacred or spirit water -- the Dakota considered it holy, believing it to be the home of the underwater serpent Unktehi. European-American settlers misconstrued the name to mean Bad Spirit Lake, which they shortened to Devils Lake. The body of water is a closed-basin watershed, meaning it has no natural outlet. Since the 1990s, rising water levels have caused increasingly severe flooding on the Spirit Lake Reservation, destroying homes and agricultural land. The fort sits on the southern shore of this unpredictable lake, its brick walls now facing a threat the original builders never anticipated: water creeping steadily toward foundations that have stood since the Grant administration.