Site of the First Fort Bliss
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established September 14, 1849 by Brevet Major Jefferson Van Horne with 4 companies of the Third United States Infantry and known as Post El Paso * Vacated in 1851 * Re-garrisoned in 1854 and named Fort Bliss in honor of Brevet Major William Wallace Smith Bliss * Abandoned in 1868 due to encroachment of the Rio Grande. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On September 14, 1849, Brevet Major Jefferson Van Horne established this post with four companies of the Third U.S. Infantry, first calling it Post El Paso. Re-garrisoned in 1854, it was renamed Fort Bliss to honor Brevet Major William Wallace Smith Bliss. The original post was finally abandoned in 1868 as the shifting Rio Grande encroached on its grounds.
Why it matters
It marks the beginning of a storied frontier military presence on the far western border, planted in the years just after the U.S.–Mexico boundary was drawn.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1849 the land around the Pass of the North had only just become American territory. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had ended the U.S.–Mexican War the year before and set the Rio Grande as the boundary here. El Paso's settlements sat on a line that had only recently been drawn on paper, with Mexico just across the river.
The same years brought the California Gold Rush, and the pass became a natural corridor for wagon trains and emigrants heading west. The U.S. Army was expected to protect travelers, assert federal authority over the new border and deal with the Apache and other Native nations whose homelands this was. Small posts of a few companies were scattered across a huge territory.
The Army's presence here was unsettled from the start. The post was opened, vacated, garrisoned again and eventually forced out by the river itself. During the Civil War, Fort Bliss passed into Confederate hands in 1861, and Texas forces used it as a base for their campaign into New Mexico before Union troops returned. Nothing about this frontier stayed put, including its geography.
People & events
On September 14, 1849, Brevet Major Jefferson Van Horne arrived with four companies of the Third United States Infantry and set up camp. At first the garrison went by a plain, practical name: Post El Paso. Infantrymen on this frontier spent much of their time escorting travelers, guarding routes and showing the flag in an area where federal power was thin.
The post was vacated in 1851, a common fate for frontier garrisons as the Army shifted its limited troops. When soldiers came back in 1854, the post got a new name honoring Brevet Major William Wallace Smith Bliss. Bliss is remembered as a gifted staff officer. He served as chief of staff to General Zachary Taylor during the Mexican War and was also Taylor's son-in-law. He had died young, and naming a border post after him tied it to the war that had created the border.
The final chapter belongs to the river. The Rio Grande was famous for shifting its channel, and by 1868 it had moved so close that the post had to be abandoned. The Army moved elsewhere, and Fort Bliss changed locations more than once before reaching the high ground where it stands today.
Its place in the American story
This modest riverside camp was the start of one of the U.S. Army's most important installations. Fort Bliss eventually grew into a huge post covering parts of Texas and New Mexico, and its history spans frontier patrols, the Mexican Revolution border years, cavalry, air defense and modern armored training. It all traces back to four infantry companies in 1849.
The site also tells the story of the border itself. The Rio Grande was chosen as an international boundary partly because it seemed fixed and obvious. In practice it wandered, flooding and cutting new channels. The same forces that drove the Army from this post caused decades of boundary disputes between the United States and Mexico around El Paso.
The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, the year of the Texas Centennial, when markers like it were placed across the state. The Centennial was a deliberate effort to anchor Texas history in physical places, and this marker preserves a site that otherwise has no buildings left to remember it.
If you visit
Expect a marker rather than a fort. The original post was abandoned in 1868, and the river and the growing city erased its buildings long ago. What remains is the location and the chance to stand where El Paso's long military story began.
Take a moment to think about the river. Today the Rio Grande around El Paso is mostly a managed, channeled waterway, so it is hard to imagine it pushing an Army post off its ground. That contrast is the point. The landscape you see is not the one Van Horne's soldiers knew.
To understand the full story, consider a visit to the present-day Fort Bliss area, where military museums tell the installation's later history. Access rules on an active base can change, so check ahead. El Paso is a natural stop on any Interstate 10 trip across the Southwest, and it pairs well with the city's missions and its views across the border from the mountains.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Jefferson Van Horne
- · William Wallace Smith Bliss
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Camp Concordia and Fort Bliss
El Paso, TX
After the Civil War, the U.S. Army found its old El Paso post at Magoffinsville unsuitable and in 1868 moved the garrison to the Concordia Ranch, establishing Camp Concordia. Built of adobe barracks and outbuildings, the post was renamed Fort Bliss in 1869 and, despite hard living conditions, guarded the frontier until troops withdrew in 1876—only to return within a year. It was the third of six sites the Army's El Paso post would occupy over the decades.
Fort Bliss at Lanoria Mesa
El Paso, TX
In 1849, troops under Maj. Jefferson Van Horne planted a post at El Paso to hold territory won in the U.S.-Mexico War, and after several moves the fort settled at Lanoria Mesa in 1893 on land donated by citizens. Renamed for Lt. Col. William W.S. Bliss in 1854, it became the headquarters for Gen. John J. Pershing's Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa in 1916 and the nation's largest cavalry post by 1941. Vastly enlarged for World War II anti-aircraft training, it later hosted the German-led birth of the U.S. Army's missile program.
San Elizario
San Elizario, TX
Founded in 1789 as the Spanish Presidio de San Elceario, this outpost was relocated northward to shield settlers from raids, guarding the El Paso district through the twilight of Spanish rule and the Mexican War for Independence. After the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo drew the border at the Rio Grande, the town became El Paso County's first seat and, in 1877, the flashpoint of the violent Salt War over access to communal salt beds.
The Killing of General J. J. Byrne
Sierra Blanca, TX
In August 1880, the Apache leader Victorio's raiders ambushed a Fort Davis–bound stagecoach in a steep West Texas canyon, killing its lone passenger, retired general and surveyor J. J. Byrne, almost instantly while the driver wheeled the mules around and raced back to Fort Quitman. It was among the last acts of a two-year campaign in which Victorio's guerrilla tactics baffled and impressed the U.S. Army across Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico. Later that year, thousands of American and Mexican soldiers hunted Victorio down and killed him in Mexico.