Ashland is along what was once a military road. That road went from Fort Dodge (now Dodge City, Kansas) to the north and Fort Supply in the Indian Territory to the south. In 1870, during the Comanche Campaign against the Native Americans, the Army built two redoubts along the Dodge/Supply trail near the current place of Ashland: the Bear Creek Redoubt, five miles to the north, and the Cimarron Redoubt, nine miles to the south.