the 9th Kansas Cavalry was relieved by a detachment of the 1st Colorado Volunteer Cavalry under Captain David L. Hardy. The following July 1863, Hardy and Company M left the fort to pursue hostile Utes in the mountains, leaving the camp in control of Company B of the 1st Colorado under Lt. George W. Hawkins. In April 1864, Company B was ordered to Camp Sanborn to bolster the garrison there, leaving a void that was filled in mid-May 1864 by the arrival of Company F of the 11th Ohio Cavalry, commanded by William H. Evans. The most significant event its history occurred within a month after the arrival of the 11th Ohio. The event was not a battle but the flooding on the Poudre River, swollen from spring snow melt, in early June 1864. The flood destroyed the camp nearly completely, with many of the soldiers barely escaping with their lives. Poudre location (1864–1867) The obvious unsuitability of the site for future use prompted Evans to order Lieutenant Joseph Hannah to begin scouting for an alternative site. Joseph Mason, a local settler, came forth with a proposal for a new site adjacent to his own claim four miles downstream on the Poudre, on a section of high ground on the south bank of the river. The site offered protection from flooding, had a prominent viewshed of the terrain, and was directly on the "Denver Road", the section of the Overland Trail through the county. The site offered the additional benefit of being removed from the saloons and other temptations in Laporte. On August 20, 1864, Colonel Collins issued Special Order No. 1 relocating the camp to the site suggested by Mason. The new post, by then known as "Fort Collins", was fully occupied by October 22 and the Laporte site was completely abandoned. The new site saw as little direct action as the original site, but its proximity to the growing community of new homesteaders, as well as its location on the Denver Road, made it increasingly the center of local transportation and commerce. The site itself is in present-day Old Town in Fort Collins, between Jefferson Street (the old Denver Road) and the Poudre River. The actual military reservation encompassed an expansive territory that stretches several miles south of the Poudre, but the actual campgrounds were confined to a small area in present-day Old Town. The 300 foot square