Fort Ruby

A National Historic Landmark. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.

From the record

“Fort Ruby, also known as Camp Ruby, was built in 1862 by the United States Army, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), in the "wilderness of eastern Nevada". in the region separated from the larger Utah Territory of 1850-1896, further east, then organized as the brief Nevada Territory of 1861-1864,. It protected both the California Trail and the later Overland Trail westward routes for overland mail and pioneer wagon route for stagecoaches and utilized for the short-lived Pony Express (1860-1861) horse riders with pouches of the United States Mail This was in order to maintain speedier links and communication between residents of the new state of California, on the West Coast on the Pacific Ocean and to the other states of the federal Union in the East.”
Wikipedia article Fort Ruby, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 21 National Register listings published here for White Pine County · listed in 1966 · category: Building · a National Historic Landmark.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

National Historic Landmark. The highest federal designation, held by about 2,600 places in the country against roughly 100,000 Register listings.
What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 2 buildingss as contributing to the listing.
Address. Near Hobson on W side of Ruby Lake, Hobson
When was it listed? October 1966
Category. building
Census division. Cherry Creek
National Register reference number. 66000460 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

27 since 1992

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 27 fires within 5 miles of Fort Ruby between 1992 and 2020, burning about 851 acres in total. 23 started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Natural	23
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Debris and open burning	1
Recreation and ceremony	1
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
6 September 1998	Natural	under an acre	Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge	FS06
13 September 2016	Natural	under an acre	Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest	JOHNSON
5 August 2012	Natural	under an acre	Ely District Office	PONY
5 August 2012	Natural	under an acre	Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest	SHANTYTOWN
4 August 2019	Natural	under an acre	Ely District Office	WOODWARDS
31 August 2003	Natural	79 acres	Elko District Office	FWS 2
31 August 2001	Natural	under an acre	Elko District Office	USFS 8
29 August 2003	Natural	79 acres	Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge	SOUTH MARSH

Every fire recorded in White Pine County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 66000460 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
White Pine County	All 21 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.