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. Later by the following year of 1861, the American-based Overland Telegraph Company with its trans-continental line was constructed laboriously at the beginning of the crucial Civil War, using the new 1844 invention of the electric telegraph, and subsequently the first of four transcontinental railroad lines in 1869.