Near Route of Old Military Road
Junction, Kimble County, Texas
Marker Inscription
SUPPLY LINE FROM U.S. ARMY HEADQUARTERS IN SAN ANTONIO TO FORT TERRETT, 1852-1854. IN THE 1850'S TWO-THIRDS OF TEXAS WAS HELD BY COMANCHES OR THREATENED BY RAIDS. POSTS SUCH AS FORT TERRETT STOOD FROM RED RIVER TO THE RIO GRANDE, FOR PROTECTION. THE FORT TERRETT ROAD PARALLELLED JOHNSON (ELM) FORK OF THE LLANO NEAR JUNCTION. THE ARMY CLOSED FORT TERRETT IN 1854, BUT SETTLERS USED THE ROUTE AS THEIR MAIN ROAD TO SAN ANTONIO. IT APPEARED ON KIMBLE COUNTY MAPS UNTIL 1930. PARTS OF THE ROAD ARE STILL VISIBLE. RECORDED TEXAS HISTORIC LANDMARK - 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the early 1850s the U.S. Army strung a line of frontier posts from the Red River to the Rio Grande, and this route carried supplies from headquarters in San Antonio to Fort Terrett. Two-thirds of Texas then lay under Comanche control or the threat of raids, so the road was a lifeline of protection. After the fort closed in 1854, settlers adopted the military road as their main路 to San Antonio, and it appeared on county maps into the 20th century.
Why it matters
The road illustrates how frontier military logistics doubled as the infrastructure of settlement, with army supply lines becoming the first highways of a still-contested Texas.
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Related events
- · Fort Terrett supply line
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Kimble County
Junction, TX
This hill country along the Llano was home to Jumano and Apache peoples when Spanish explorers passed through in the 1600s and 1700s, before the Comanche came to dominate the region by the mid-1800s. Frontier forts and the Texas Rangers guarded the area as Anglo settlement pushed westward, and the county was organized in 1876, named for an Alamo defender. Long troubled by outlaws until the Rangers restored order in the 1880s, it settled into a livelihood of sheep and goat ranching for wool and mohair.
Old Bear Creek Texas Ranger Camp
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Established in October 1877, the Old Bear Creek camp served as a patrol base for Company E of the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion, watching the Llano River country for Indians and outlaws. The region was a haven for cattle and horse thieves, but within weeks Lieutenant N. O. Reynolds and his thirty men had captured many; in 1878 they helped repel one of the area's last Indian raids. Their presence, maintained into the mid-1880s, opened Kimble and nearby counties to peaceful settlement.
Spanish Road to Santa Fe, 1808
London vicinity, TX
In 1808, in the last years of Spanish Texas, Capt. Francisco Amangual led some 200 soldiers from San Antonio to chart the most direct road to Santa Fe—a response to American explorer Zebulon Pike's recent trek into New Mexico. Leaving on March 30, Amangual's party pushed through this valley along the East James Creek, hunting buffalo and bear and battling stampedes, reaching Santa Fe on June 19 before returning months later; traces of the route are still visible today.
Fort McKavett - Fort Clark Military Road
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Laid out in 1852 and reopened when the frontier forts were reactivated after the Civil War, this road ran north and south between Forts Terrett, Clark, and McKavett, its route chosen chiefly for the water along the way. It carried mail, freight, troops, and a trickle of settlers, and served as a line of march for Colonel Ranald Mackenzie's campaigns against Native peoples to the northwest. After the forts closed in 1883, ranchers used stretches of it to drive cattle to market.