Site of Camp Hudson
Juno, Val Verde County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of Camp Hudson, established by the United States Army, June 7, 1857, as a means of protecting the road from San Antonio to El Paso against hostile Indians. Named in honor of 2nd Lieutenant Walter W. Hudson who died April 19, 1850, of wounds received in action with Indians in Texas. Evacuated by Federal troops March 17, 1861 but reoccupied after the Civil War. Abandoned in April 1868. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established by the U.S. Army in 1857, Camp Hudson guarded the vital San Antonio–to–El Paso road against Indian raids and was named for a lieutenant who died of wounds from an earlier fight in Texas. Federal troops evacuated it at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, reoccupied it afterward, and abandoned it for good in 1868.
Why it matters
The post marks the Army's effort to keep open the overland routes that tied the far Southwest to the rest of the young nation.
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Related people
- · Walter W. Hudson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Military Roads in Texas
Brackettville, TX
The roads that moved troops across early Texas often began as Indian trails worn into wagon ruts. This marker traces a whole network: the Spanish Camino Real opened in 1691, the Chihuahua Road linking Fort Clark to southwestern posts, the grim Comanche War Trail that carried captives and stolen horses, and the U.S. military roads surveyed after 1848. Marcy's 1849 trail guided California gold-seekers, the 2nd Cavalry made the Fort Belknap–San Antonio road an artery, and Mackenzie's 1870s campaigns opened the staked plains — until the railroad displaced them all by 1881.
Dead Man's Pass
Comstock, TX
This narrow canyon guarded one of the most feared stretches of the San Antonio–El Paso road, the overland lifeline that carried Forty-Niners and freighters toward California after the Gold Rush. Named by 1849 after a deadly ambush on Dr. Lyon's wagon train, it became notorious for raids and killings; freighter August Santleben later tallied nearly 400 deaths along the wider frontier road. The Army built Camp Hudson on the Devils River in 1857 to protect travelers, yet the pass was still considered dangerous into the early 1880s.
Hood's Devils River Fight
Juno, TX
In July 1857 a small detachment of the U.S. 2nd Cavalry under young Lt. John Bell Hood tracked a fresh trail toward the Devils River, only to be lured into an ambush by a decoy flag near an Indian camp. Roughly a hundred Comanche and Lipan Apache warriors closed in, and grass fires set by the women hemmed the soldiers into brutal hand-to-hand fighting. Outnumbered several times over, Hood's men held and broke the attack; two troopers died and several, including Hood, were wounded before a relief column arrived from Camp Hudson.
Medal of Honor Fight, 1875
Comstock, TX
In the spring of 1875, the Texas-Mexico borderlands were still contested ground, and the U.S. Army leaned on the skilled Black Seminole (Seminole-Negro) Indian scouts to track raiders across the brush country. On April 25, Lt. John L. Bullis and three of those scouts caught up with a far larger Comanche party near this spot and were forced to withdraw under fire. When Bullis's horse bolted and left him stranded, the scouts turned back into danger to save him — a rescue that earned all three the Medal of Honor.