41.974681, -117.614967

Lots of spelling issues here. Started out being called "Queen River Station," which was later corrected to "Quin River" since it was named after James Quin, but sometimes spelled with two "n's."

WHICH IS WHICH?
The Humboldt Register and White Pine News have settled the little misunderstanding about the proper name of the Quin River, which the settlers on that stream generally pronounce Queen River. The News says the creek was named after James Quin, of a hunting and exploring party, and should be called either Quin River or Quin's River. The first is preferable.
-Elko Independent, January 5, 1870

Then when Lt. Col. Charles McDermit got himself killed, it was called "Camp McDermit" or "Fort McDermit," but when the post office opened they added an additional "t" and it became "McDermitt."

On August 7, 1865, Colonel McDermit was ambushed by Indians near the creek that now bears his name. The fort was renamed McDermit, a post office was established and called McDermitt by postal officials. There is still discussion about which name to use. However, it is generally accepted today that the name is McDermitt and is used on maps, so why fight it?
-Howard Hickson, Battle of Table Mountain

The State of Nevada informs us:

Fort McDermitt
Established in 1865, Fort McDermitt was first called Quinn River Camp #33 on the East Fork, then renamed in honor of military district commander Lt. Col. Charles McDermitt, who died while fighting Native Americans. The fort consisted of several adobe, stone, and frame buildings surrounding a square. Its purpose was to protect the Virginia City-Quinn River Valley-Oregon road. Twenty-four years of operation made it the longest-serving active army fort in Nevada. Its troops participated in the Modoc War and in conflicts with the Bannock and Shoshone Tribes. It was the last of the Nevada army posts in service when converted into an American Indian reservation school in 1889.
-STATE HISTORICAL MARKER NO. 144

Of McDermit the soldier, the history books tell us:

DEATH OF COLONEL CHARLES MCDERMIT
On the seventh of August [1865], this officer, who was in command of the Department of Nevada, was shot by an ambushed Indian, when riding along a
trail. He was returning to Camp McDermit, then known as Quin's River Station, from a scout on Quin's River, at the time, and lived but four hours after receiving the fatal wound. His remains were taken to Fort Churchill, where they arrived on the nineteenth of August, and were buried there the next day. A letter from him, written at Quin's River Station, on the first of August, stated as follows:--
"We have killed thirty-two Indians since I took the field, and have had one man wounded, and one man killed."
-History of Nevada 1881

When the U.S. Army was queried, they returned this measured response, conveniently numbered for your reading pleasure:

1. Fort McDermitt was established in Humboldt County, Nevada, on the east bank of the Quinn River near the mouth of a canyon formed by a break in the Santa Rosa Mountains. It is seventy-two miles north of Winnemucca and near the Nevada-Oregon boundary line. It was first known as Quinn River Camp No. 33 and was established on 14 August 1865 by Captain J. C. Doughty, Commander of Company 12 of the 2nd Cavalry, on orders of Lt. Col. Charles McDermitt, 2nd Cavalry Commander, Military District Nevada. The post was originally declared by executive order dated 3 September 1867 to be two miles square with a 6,400.00-acre hay
reserve extending along the Quinn river a distance of five miles and two miles wide (one mile on each side of the river). Another executive order dated 4 October 1870, extended the reservation further up and down the river bringing the total acres to 10,374.40.
2. The fort was established for the protection of the stage route and wagon road from Virginia City through Star City, Nevada, in Quinn River Valley, to Boise City, Idaho. It was intended for two companies and built around a rectangular parade ground measuring 600' x 285'. All of the post buildings were one story with shingle roofs. These were first erected in 1866 and 1867. In the late 1870's additional frame structures were added. Supplies to keep the fort running for 6 months were kept on hand.
3. On July 24, 1889, Fort McDermitt was turned over to the Interior Department
-DEFENSE ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION PROGRAM, FORMERLY USED DEFENSE SITES, FINDINGS AND DETERMINATION OF ELIGIBILITY
FORT MCDERMITT, .HUMBOLDT COUNTY, CA [sic] FINDINGS OF FACT
J. RICHARD CAPKA, Brigadier General, United States Army Commanding

With the influx of new settlers and their livestock into the area, the natives found the resources they needed to survive dwindling. In order to make ends meet, sometimes they took to raiding settlements. These attacks compelled the government to establish a military detachment at Quinn (or Queen) River Station in order to persuade them that this behavior was not in their best interest.

Lieutenant-Colonel Charles McDermit was in command of the Sub-District of Nevada, a part of the Department of the Pacific, and spent most of his time trying to maintain a tenuous peace between Indian and whites. In 1865 McDermit was killed in an ambush near the Quinn River Station, an attack generally attributed to Indians even though it was not documented. The murder of McDermit, and the continuation of unrest in the area, precipitated the detachment’s escalation
to a fully fledged installation. The new fort was dubbed McDermit(t) in honor of the late Lieutenant-Colonel. Fort McDermitt’s intractable mission was to protect a growing white population from Indian raids and to curtail attacks of retaliation against the natives. The military settlement benefitted nearby Indian groups who had begun settling more permanently in the vicinity, by reportedly offering food, clothing, medical aid, and work, to the Indians, as well as facilities such
as a trading post and stage line. The Indian population at Fort McDermitt at this time (1860s and 70s) has been estimated at between 100 and 350, but was in constant fluctuation as natives were forcibly moved between settlements and reservations, including Pyramid Lake (which was not recognized by the executive branch until 1874 but was utilized as a detainment center as early as 1866 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs). The mixed Paiute and Shoshone population at Fort
McDermitt spiked in 1878 as natives sought protection during the Bannock War. In this brief struggle, Bannock (a Paiute band “the buffalo eaters”), northern Shoshone, and other northern Paiute, insubordinately left reservations in Idaho and Oregon to escape the famine caused by overcrowding and mismanagement by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The Bannock War was one of the last displays of tribal militancy in protest of the reservation system, though recalcitrance in the face of the U.S. Army must have seemed futile even to the Indian insurgents. The “war” lasted only a few months yet embroiled a variety of reservation Indians. The conflict ended after much blood shed when 131 hostiles surrendered in Wyoming. With Northern Nevada finally pacified, Fort McDermitt was closed in 1886 and the military detachment reassigned. A caretaker was left in charge of the fort and the military reserve land, which was signed over to the Secretary of the Interior for Indian use, in the hope that a school would be built there to educate the local Indians.
-The Paiute & Shoshone of Fort McDermitt, Nevada: A Short History Prepared for Sierra Service Project by Ben Poff

The Fort could come to the settlers or the settlers could come to the fort.

The Indian War.
SAN FRANCISCO, June 13.A Silver City, Idaho, dispatch dated last night says the Indians at Juniper mountain will be able tomorrow to effect junction with those who have left the Malheur reservation, and in combination with the disaffected Piutes and Shoshones will number about 600 fighting men. A daughter of old Winnemucca, chief of the Piutes, has been arrested in Jordan valley while attempting to smuggle ammunition to the hostile Indians. Some of the Bannock Indians have returned to Fort Hall. The farmers have deserted their homes for a hundred miles around. A Winnemucca dispatch says that Fort McDermit is garrisoned only by a few infantrymen, who might be over-powered should the Indians attack them in force. The refugee settlers have gathered there for protection.
June 13, 1878

One reason not often mentioned that locals want the forts around-- they were great for business.

Proposals for Supplies. The D. Q. M. General of the Military Division of the Pacific, Department of California, invites proposals for the delivery at Fort McDermit of 400 cords of hard wood, 135,000 pounds of barley, 190,000 pounds of hay, and 55,000 pounds of straw. Also for the delivery at Fort McDermit or Winnemucca of 1,000,000 pounds of Rocky Mountain coal. Proposals will be received at the office of the Post Quartermaster for these supplies until noon, Tuesday, June 10th. Blank forms of proposals may be had from the Post Quartermaster.
-Silver State, May 31, 1879

The Colonel is now buried at Lone Mountain cemetery in Carson City.

Colonel Charles McDermit, whose grave, according to the Times, has not even a headboard, had command of the Department of Nevada during the Indian wars of 1864-5, with head quarters at Fort Churchill. In the Summer of 1863 the Indians were on the war-path in this section and endeavored to drive the white settlers from Paradise Valley and to prevent travel over the Idaho road. Colonel McDermit took command of the troops in the field against the Indians and on his way back to Quin River Station, where Fort McDermit is now situated, from a scout up the Valley, he was shot by an Indian who was concealed in the brush on a stream now known as McDermit Creek, and lived only a few hours. This occurred on the 7th of August 1865, and his body was placed in a rough board coffin, the best that could be procured at the time, and taken in a wagon to Fort Churchill, where it arrived twelve days later. The weather was intensely hot and de-composition having set in immediately after death, it was almost impossible to get the remains to Fort Churchill, where they were buried with Military honors. Colonel McDermit was a brave soldier and in justice to his memory the State of Nevada if not the General Government, ought to see that a suitable and permanent monument should mark his last resting place.
-Silver State, May 27, 1882

Don't now how typical this was, but Sarah Winnemucca describes part of her time at the fort:


There were now nine hundred in all at Camp McDermitt. Every head of a family was furnished with a good tent of the requisite size for his family, such tents as are used by the soldiers; and every morning, at five o'clock, rations for the day were issued. A pound and a half of meat was given to every grown person, and good bread, – for they actually baked good bread for them, – and once a month coffee, rice, sugar, salt, pepper, and beans were issued. Each woman came to me every day with her basket, and her number on a tag, fastened to a leather thong tied round her neck, and told the size of her family and took what she needed from me; and everything was recorded, for that is the way things are done in soldiers' camps. Every one had enough. My father was with us at that time. He told my people in council one day that he thought it was an imposition to be living entirely on the soldier-fathers, when we could do something to support ourselves. He wanted them to go on hunting excursions in the summer, and bring in dried venison, rabbits, and what other game they could find; and the women to go out and gather grass-seed, and dig roots and do what they could toward the supplies of the next winter. I told Col. McElroy what my father had said to his people, and he told them to go to the sutler's store and get what ammunition they wanted and bring him the record of it, and he would see that it was paid for. My father knew that the army gave this support for the Indians as prisoners out of its own supplies. My people had enough, I said; they had more than enough, and by being prudent about their rations they could save and sell enough to get calicoes and other necessary things for the women and children; for these things are not found in army supplies. It is this generosity and this kind care and order and discipline that make me like the care of the army for my people.
-LIFE AMONG THE PIUTES: Their Wrongs and Claims by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, 1883


As with other forts and camps, the local populace found them to be a willing market for beef, hay, and produce. They didn't want to see them go.

A petition is being circulated by the people of Quin River country, praying the government not to abandon Fort McDermit. Every citizen of the upper country has signed it, making it a very formidable looking document.
-Salt Lake Tribune, January 8, 1875

But, it's gonna happen

It is officially stated that Fort McDermit will be abandoned next June. The Silver State says: Possibly Senators Stewart and Jones may be influential enough at the War Department to get the order rescinded.
-Pioche Record, April 6, 1889

STORES FROM FORT MCDERMIT
Peter Roberti's team arrived yesterday from Fort McDermit loaded with ordnance stores, principally cartridges, which are being shipped to Benicia Arsenal, California. These stores are being shipped preparatory to the abandonment of the Fort by order of the War Department.
-Silver State, April 18, 1889

It's a done deal.

FORT MCDERMIT ABANDONED
Fort McDermit, which is situated in the northern part of this county near the Oregon line, has been abandoned by the military. It was established by General George Crook, the celebrated Indian lighter, who gave it the name of McDermit, in honor of Colonel Charles McDermit, who was killed by the Indians near the site of the fort. It was garrisoned continuously for over twenty years, a part of the time by cavalry and infantry, but for several years past by infantry exclusively. It was abandoned by the War Department, not because all danger of a Indian outbreak is past, but for the reason that it is remote from railroad communication and the cost of transporting supplies is considered excessive. Upon recommendation of a special agent of the Indian Bureau, an Indian school will be established on the reservation, and probably the land will be given to the Indians in severalty for farming purposes.
-Silver State, June 27, 1889