Route of Nolan Expedition
Meadow, Terry County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Army and civilian effort in 1877 to halt raiding of Chief "Old Black Horses" Comanches. In group were 60 Negro troops of Co. A, 10th U.S. Cavalry, and 22 buffalo hunters known as "The Forlorn Hope". Troops departed Fort Concho in early July, led by Capt. Nicholas Nolan. Eluded by Indians and finding water holes dry, on July 7 men were thirst-crazed. By drinking horse blood and urine, soldiers lived 86 parched hours; finally reached old supply base. Hunters left group; found water alone. All but 4 soldiers survived this heroic test of endurance. (1972)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In July 1877, Captain Nicholas Nolan led some sixty Buffalo Soldiers of Company A, 10th U.S. Cavalry—joined by 22 buffalo hunters who called themselves 'The Forlorn Hope'—onto the parched Llano Estacado in pursuit of Comanche raiders. Eluded by their quarry and finding the water holes dry, the men went 86 hours without water, surviving by drinking the blood and urine of their horses before staggering back to a supply base. All but four soldiers lived through the ordeal.
Why it matters
The all-Black regiments known as Buffalo Soldiers bore much of the hardest, least-thanked duty on the western frontier, and their endurance here became a byword for grit.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the summer of 1877, the Llano Estacado — the vast, table-flat 'Staked Plain' of West Texas — was still one of the most forbidding landscapes in North America. Almost treeless and desperately short of surface water, it swallowed travelers who did not know exactly where the scattered waterholes lay. For the Comanche, it had long been a stronghold; for outsiders, it was a place to fear.
The Civil War had ended more than a decade earlier, and with it came a reorganized frontier army tasked with policing the edge of settlement. Among its units were regiments of Black soldiers, established by Congress after the war, who served across the Southwest at forts like Fort Concho. The plains they patrolled were dry, dangerous, and thankless duty.
Into this setting rode an expedition meant to stop raiding by a band of Comanches. It set out in early July, the cruelest possible season to test men and horses against a country with no reliable water.
People & events
The column that left Fort Concho was an unusual pairing: roughly sixty Black troopers of Company A, 10th U.S. Cavalry, joined by twenty-two civilian buffalo hunters who grimly nicknamed themselves 'The Forlorn Hope.' At their head was Captain Nicholas Nolan, charged with halting the raids of the Comanche leader remembered on the marker as 'Old Black Horses.'
What followed became a legend of sheer endurance rather than of battle. The Comanches they pursued slipped away, and the waterholes the soldiers counted on were dry. By July 7 the men were, in the marker's blunt phrase, thirst-crazed. To stay alive they drank the blood and even the urine of their own horses, and in that desperate state they held on for some eighty-six hours without water.
At last the survivors staggered back to an old supply base. The hunters had separated from the soldiers and found water on their own. Of Nolan's troopers, all but four came through the ordeal — a toll that measures both the brutality of the plains and the discipline of the men who crossed them.
Its place in the American story
The Black regiments of the frontier army — the soldiers the Plains nations reportedly called 'Buffalo Soldiers' — carried much of the hardest and least-celebrated duty in the post–Civil War West. They guarded stage routes, strung telegraph lines, escorted surveyors, and rode long punishing patrols, often with worn equipment and little public recognition.
The Nolan Expedition distilled that experience into a single searing episode. There was no famous victory here, no decisive charge — only men enduring the near-impossible and mostly surviving it. That is precisely why it matters: it shows the frontier as it usually was, a contest against distance, heat, and thirst as much as against any adversary.
Remembering these soldiers by name and unit also corrects an old imbalance in how the West was told. For too long their service was left out of the popular story. A marker that names Company A of the 10th Cavalry puts them back where they belong — at the center of the country they helped patrol.
If you visit
The land around you here is the point. This is the flat, sun-hammered edge of the Llano Estacado, where the horizon seems to go on without limit and shade and water are both scarce. Come in high summer, even briefly, and the 1877 ordeal stops being an abstraction.
There is nothing dramatic to photograph — no canyon, no monument-worthy peak — and that plainness is the honest teacher. Picture sixty exhausted troopers and their horses strung across this openness for days without water, and the emptiness starts to feel like the hardest terrain a soldier could be asked to cross.
If you're tracing the story of the Buffalo Soldiers or the frontier army across West Texas, treat this as a place to slow down and read the whole inscription rather than a quick roadside glance. Carry your own water, respect the heat, and let the sheer scale of the plain tell you why 'The Forlorn Hope' earned its name.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Nicholas Nolan
Related events
- · Nolan Expedition of 1877
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877
Morton, TX
In the summer of 1877, troopers of Company A, 10th Cavalry—the African American Buffalo Soldiers who helped guard the Texas frontier—set out from their posts to pursue a Comanche party across the arid Llano Estacado. The Comanches drew the column away from every water hole, and after days in the heat Capt. Nicholas Nolan led his parched men and animals back toward Double Lakes, having gone 86 hours without water. Four soldiers who wandered off in a desperate search for water never came back.
Buffalo Soldier Tragedy of 1877 in Lynn County
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After the Civil War, African American "Buffalo Soldiers" patrolled the western frontier, and in July 1877 Company A of the 10th Cavalry set out from Double Lake in pursuit of a Comanche party. The Comanche drew the troopers away from water, and the soldiers endured extreme heat and 86 hours without water; horses and mules died and men became lost searching for springs. Four soldiers died on the expedition, including Pvt. John T. Gordon, buried at Double Lakes.
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