Ranger Peak
Winters, Runnels County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for Company E, Texas Rangers, which was stationed 1/2 mile east of peak in 1874. Atop peak, Rangers (Under Capt. W. J. "Jeff" Maltby) kept a lookout for Indians. Outfit was part of the frontier battalion, organized to protect Texas settlers on frontier stretching from Red River to the Nueces. Camp was abandoned in 1876.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This hilltop took its name from Company E of the Texas Rangers, who in 1874 camped just half a mile to the east and posted lookouts on the summit to watch for Indian raiders. The company belonged to the Frontier Battalion, strung along the line of settlement from the Red River to the Nueces, and abandoned the camp in 1876.
Why it matters
Vantage points like Ranger Peak were the eyes of the frontier defense system that guarded the advancing edge of Texas settlement.
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Related people
- · W. J. Maltby
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ranger Campsite
Winters, TX
In 1874 roughly twenty-five to thirty Texas Rangers of Company E camped a half-mile east of here under Captain W. J. "Jeff" Maltby, posting lookouts on nearby Ranger Peak to watch for raids. The remains of a dry well they dug can still be seen.
Ranger Campsite Water Well
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In 1874 Governor Richard Coke raised the Frontier Battalion — six companies of Rangers under Major John B. Jones — to guard a line of settlements reaching from the Red River to the coast. Company E, led by Captain W. J. Maltby, camped here amid tents and a horse corral and kept a sentry post on nearby Ranger Peak; the hand-dug well beside them never struck water.
Town of Buffalo Gap
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Buffalo Gap takes its name from the pass in the Callahan Divide that funneled the great herds — buffalo that fed the Apache and Comanche and later drew white hunters around 1874, whose dugouts became the town's first homes. Named county seat in 1878 and sitting on the Western Cattle Trail, it briefly flourished, only to be eclipsed in 1883 when the railroad crowned nearby Abilene as county seat. Its rise and decline mirror dozens of small Texas towns that lived and died by the trail and the rail.
Vicinity of Indian Fight
Buffalo Gap, TX
On August 29, 1863, Lt. T.C. Wright and eleven Texas state troopers overtook a party of raiders, probably Comanches, driving stolen horses north from Mason County. Forced to charge uphill against a larger, determined foe, the outnumbered soldiers, two badly wounded by arrows, finally broke off, and the raiders escaped with the herd. A lone rider slipped away in the dark to summon an ambulance from Camp Colorado, forty-five miles distant.