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The O:JA&L Masters Series
Flash Fiction
Featured Writer: Michael Martone
From The Tiny Book of Forts by Michael Martone. Click on the title to explore more of his work in the new PDF chapbook available now as a free offering from O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press.
FORT DODGE (Iowa)
The detachment from Fort Snelling ended up defending nothing much more than a deposit of gypsum at the fork of the Des Moines River and Lizard Creek (now Gypsum Creek). They abandoned the fort a year later, left the land to the miners and millers. Fort Dodge is famous for walls—plaster board, drywall, sheet rock. There is a full-scale recreation of the military outpost. It houses a replica of the archeological hoax, the Cardiff Giant, which was sculpted from Fort Dodge gypsum. It is a fake of a fake in a fake fort of a fort that might not have ever existed.
About the writer: Michael Martone is an American author. A prolific writer, he has published 30 books and chapbooks. From 1996 to 2020, he was a professor at the University of Alabama where he taught in the Program in Creative Writing. Martone is now retired.
Image: Moses Henry Dodge (1782-1867). Henry Dodge was a veteran of the The War of 1812 and The Blackhawk War. He was a Governor of Wisconsin Territory and later, a US Senator. Moses Henry Dodge is namesake of Fort Dodge, Iowa. Photograph by unknown artist. No size specified. Before 1867. Public domain.
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