Jeff Davis County
Fort Davis, Jeff Davis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Formed from Presidio County. Created March 15, 1887. Organized May 16, 1887. Named in honor of Jefferson Davis. 1806-1868. President of the Confederate States. Fort Davis, County Seat, Presidio County, 1875. County Seat, Jeff Davis County, since 1887.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Carved from Presidio County and organized in 1887, this West Texas county was named in honor of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States. The town of Fort Davis, which had served as Presidio County's seat, became the new county's seat. The marker records the administrative birth of a mountainous, sparsely settled corner of the Trans-Pecos.
Why it matters
The county's name reflects how deeply Confederate memory was inscribed onto the Texas map in the decades after the Civil War, even in regions far from the fighting.
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Related people
- · Jefferson Davis
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Confederate President Jefferson Davis
Fort Davis, TX
This marker traces Jefferson Davis's ties to Texas: a Mexican War officer in 1847, then U.S. Secretary of War in 1855, when he strengthened frontier forts to open West Texas and famously experimented with imported camels for desert patrols and hauling. After the Civil War and his imprisonment, the former Confederate president returned to visit the state and its veterans. Jeff Davis County was named for him in 1887.
Colonel Lewis Given Harman
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Lewis Given Harman (1818–1902) typified the many men who served the Confederacy and then pushed into the new counties of West Texas. Born in Tennessee, he came to Texas in 1838, fought in the Mexican War, and though 43 when the Civil War began, joined the 11th Texas Cavalry in the 1861 campaign to seize Confederate forts in Indian Territory, briefly commanding Fort Arbuckle. A surveyor, Indian agent, soldier, and legislator, he became a civic leader in Marathon after the town's founding in 1882.
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Carved out of Pecos County in 1883 and organized the following year, Reeves County took shape as railroads and settlers pushed into far West Texas. It was named for George Robertson Reeves, a Confederate colonel who also served in the Texas Legislature, and the town of Pecos became its seat. Markers like this, erected in 1936 for the Texas Centennial, fixed the young county's origins in public memory.
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