Military & Wartime

Chattanooga, TN

Near the mouth of Chattanooga Creek, where the Tennessee River loops around Moccasin Bend, this site served as a supply base for Tennessee troops during the Creek War of 1812–13. That conflict, fought largely against the Red Stick faction of the Creek Nation, unfolded alongside the War of 1812 and drew militia and volunteers deep into the Southern frontier. The river's dramatic bend here made it a natural staging ground as forces moved through the mountains.

Eastland, TX

During the Civil War, Camp Salmon was one link in a chain of Confederate posts set a day's horseback ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande, manned by the Texas Frontier Regiment to guard settlers against raids. Named for post commander Capt. John Salmon and later renamed Camp McCord, its men served short of food, ammunition, and horses, far from the war's celebrated battlefields. Their duty was to hold a 2,000-mile line of frontier and coast for a Confederacy that leaned heavily on Texas for supply.

San Augustine, TX

During World War II, the U.S. government spread hundreds of prisoner-of-war camps across the country, often at the urging of towns hungry for federal spending and short of workers with so many men in uniform. Opened in 1944 as a branch of Camp Fannin, this East Texas camp first held soldiers captured from Germany's Afrika Korps, who labored in the region's pine forests. It outlasted every other branch camp in the area, becoming a gathering point for prisoners awaiting repatriation before it finally closed in 1946.

Kingsville, TX

On San Fernando Creek stood a Confederate post guarding the "cotton road," the vital smuggling and trade route that ran from East Texas to the Rio Grande, keeping the blockaded South supplied. Manned from 1862 and reinforced in 1864 under the famed Colonel John S. "RIP" Ford, the camp anchored a network of cavalry commands — including Tejano units under Santos Benavides and home guards that counted King Ranch founder Richard King — who skirmished with Federal forces across South Texas. From here Ford's "Cavalry of the West" watched the cotton road and pressed the fight toward the Rio Grande Valley.

Corpus Christi, TX

For decades after 1848 the Rio Grande border saw smuggling, rustling, and armed raids, and the Mexican Revolution sharpened fears of attack — especially after Pancho Villa's 1916 raid into New Mexico. Corpus Christi officials, hoping to boost the economy, lobbied to host troops, and in August 1916 General Frederick Funston ordered infantry and the Texas Brigade headquarters to a 200-acre camp named for General Thomas Scurry. Its soldiers drilled under strict routine — and fielded a football team that outscored rivals 432 to 6 — before the site was reactivated to train troops when the U.S. entered World War I.

Springettsbury Township, PA · est. 2008

As the Revolution wound toward victory, the American army needed somewhere to hold the enemies it had captured, and in 1781 York County became that place. Camp Security, a stockade ringed by log huts, detained British soldiers surrendered by General Burgoyne at Saratoga, later joined by prisoners taken at Yorktown, along with their families. Guarded by local militia and Continental troops, it operated until the war's end in 1783; archaeologists later confirmed its location just south of here.

Cooper, TX

The land around Camp Shed Cemetery, near the North Sulphur River, was home to the Caddo before Euro-American settlers began arriving in 1836, and many early migrants used the spot as a campground on their way west. Serving the communities of Enloe and Mount Joy, the ground saw its first recorded burial — Johnnie Kerbow — in 1880 and was formally deeded in 1886, when it was still called the "Campstead" graveyard after a camp shed that once stood there. Veterans of the Civil War and both world wars rest among its graves.

Hempstead, TX

In the anxious spring of 1836, as Santa Anna's forces pressed eastward, the Texas Army camped near this point from March 31 to April 13. Here the troops crossed the rain-swollen Brazos River aboard the steamboat Yellow Stone before turning toward Harrisburg. Within weeks that march would end in the stunning victory at San Jacinto that secured Texas independence.

Stark, NH

In the spring of 1944, a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp tucked into the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire took on a strange new life. Ringed by a high fence and four guard towers, it became the only World War II prisoner of war camp in the state, holding roughly 250 German and Austrian soldiers—many taken during the fighting in North Africa. Like thousands of POWs held across the wartime United States, the men at Stark were put to work, cutting pulpwood in the surrounding forests to relieve a wartime labor shortage. Over months of shared labor, wary captors and captives in this remote mountain town formed unexpected human bonds that residents remembered long after the war.

Holliday, TX

In 1898 the United Confederate Veterans of Archer County purchased 106 acres as reunion grounds, naming the camp for the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson. For nearly four decades, until 1935, aging veterans and their families gathered here each year for three-day reunions that drew some five hundred people. Alongside the memories and speeches came ball games, dancing, contests, shows, and rodeos.

Elgin, TX

During World War II, rural Bastrop County was transformed almost overnight by Camp Swift, a sprawling 56,000-acre installation that trained some 300,000 soldiers. Several infantry divisions and the famed 10th Mountain Division trained on its grounds, and the self-contained 'city' also held thousands of German prisoners of war and ran the only combat nurse-training program in Texas. After the war it became a demobilization center before closing in 1946.

Gilmer, TX

This site marks a Civil War recruiting camp, one of the gathering points where Texas raised men for Confederate service during the conflict. Such camps were the first stop for volunteers and conscripts, where recruits were mustered, organized into companies, and sent on toward the front. They were a common but often short-lived feature of the wartime landscape across the state.

Marietta, OH

When the Civil War called Ohio's men to arms, this ground near Marietta became Camp Tucker, a mustering and training campground for Union troops. It took its name in honor of Benjamin Tupper, a Revolutionary War brigadier general who had helped organize the Ohio Company and stood among Marietta's first settlers in 1788. The site links two chapters of American service — the founding of the frontier settlement and the fight to preserve the Union three generations later.

Camp Verde, TX

Camp Verde grew up around a U.S. Army post established in the 1850s in the Texas Hill Country, best remembered as headquarters of the War Department's remarkable experiment in using camels for desert transport. The barracks here housed soldiers stationed on this frontier outpost in the years around the Civil War. Though the inscription bears only a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark medallion, the site anchors one of the more unusual chapters of the antebellum army.

Camp Verde, TX

This mercantile business opened in 1857 as the Williams Community Store, serving trade around the Camp Verde Army Post—headquarters of the War Department's famous 1857–69 experiment in using camels for military transport across the Southwest. A post office followed in 1887. The store links everyday frontier commerce to one of the most curious ventures in U.S. Army history.

Victoria, TX

After the Texas victory at San Jacinto in April 1836, Gen. Thomas J. Rusk led some 300 troops to a camp on Spring Creek near the town of Victoria, abandoned during the Runaway Scrape. Here Rusk received the famous 'Whiphandle Dispatch,' a warning of a possible Mexican counterattack smuggled in the handle of a whip, and appealed to the U.S. Army for help. Reinforcements swelled Camp Victoria to more than 2,500 men — the largest Texan force of the Revolution — but the feared invasion never came, and command passed through Lamar and Huston amid a restless, mutinous army.

Hitchcock, TX

As the United States mobilized for World War II, the government acquired more than 3,300 acres between Hitchcock and Alta Loma and built Camp Wallace, named for World War I Colonel Elmer J. Wallace. Construction began in November 1940, and by May 1941 the sprawling installation of nearly 400 buildings housed over 10,000 people for military training. Over the war it also held German prisoners of war, passed to naval control in 1945 as a veterans' separation center, and even aided relief after the 1947 Texas City disaster before being declared surplus.

Cheltenham Township, PA · est. 1999

Established in 1863 in Cheltenham Township, Camp William Penn was Pennsylvania's only training camp for African American soldiers and the largest of eighteen such camps in the nation. Over 10,000 men in eleven regiments of United States Colored Troops trained here before shipping out to fight in Virginia, South Carolina, Florida, and beyond; the camp closed in August 1865 as the war ended.

Catoosa County, GA

In early May 1864, Union corps marching from Cleveland, Tennessee, converged near Catoosa Springs to open Sherman's campaign against Atlanta, moving south toward Dalton on May 7. From the yard of the nearby Dr. Lee house, the Federal high command—Sherman, Thomas, Schofield, and others—watched the first troop movements of the drive. The armies pressed on toward Tunnel Hill and Rocky Face Ridge.

Palestine, TX

This is one of the countless small family graveyards scattered across Texas, begun by the Campbell family who settled the Mound Prairie community in 1844. Son John Bartlett Campbell returned from Civil War service, worked in a hardware store to buy his own land, and set aside an acre where his father became the first burial in 1876; descendants use the cemetery still.

Gillette, WY

In the coal and cattle country of northeastern Wyoming, this memorial honors the young men and women of Campbell County who died in the nation's service. The inscription speaks not of any one war but of duty, honor, and the price of freedom paid across generations. It stands for a rural community determined that its own be remembered.

Gillette, WY

Erected in 1955 by the local VFW Auxiliary, this memorial gathers the names of Campbell County's war dead across three conflicts of the 20th century — World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. In a sparsely populated corner of northeastern Wyoming, each name represented a substantial loss to a small ranching community. The monument reflects a mid-century wave of civic remembrance following two world wars and Korea.

Bastrop, TX

This marker honors Campbell Taylor, one of the Mina (present-day Bastrop) volunteers who took up arms in the Texas Revolution and fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. That eighteen-minute rout of Santa Anna's army secured Texas independence. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1962 to remember him among the citizen-soldiers of the young republic.

Campbellsville, KY

Settled around 1800, Campbellsville was established by the legislature in 1817 and named for brothers Adam and Andrew Campbell, who came from Virginia to their father's land grants. When Taylor County—Kentucky's 100th—was formed from Green County in 1848, the town became its seat. The county honors Gen. Zachary Taylor, the Indian-fighter of the War of 1812, Black Hawk, and Seminole campaigns whose victory at Buena Vista in 1847 made him a national hero and carried him to the presidency in 1848.

Campbellsville, KY

Taylor County's oldest congregation grew from the Pitman Creek (1791) and Robinson Creek (by 1793) churches, which merged and took the Campbellsville name in 1852. During the Civil War the frame meetinghouse served as a courtroom after Confederates burned the county courthouse. A series of later buildings—one lost to fire in 1962—led to the present Greek Revival edifice of 1963.

Campbellsville, KY

On Christmas Day 1864, the courthouse at Campbellsville went up in flames as Confederate General Hylan B. Lyon swept through Kentucky. Leading a force that began at 800 men, Lyon aimed to enforce the Confederate draft and pull Union attention away from Nashville, burning seven courthouses that federal troops had been using in just 23 days. Desertions thinned his ranks to 250 before he slipped out of the state in early January.

Mt. Enterprise, TX

The Mt. Zion Baptist Association, a fellowship of thirteen area churches, organized on this ground in 1857, and the cemetery takes its "campground" name from the Confederate cavalry of General John A. Wharton, who camped at the church during 1864-65. Though the first recorded burial dates to 1910, numerous unmarked graves point to earlier interments, and the roughly 140-site cemetery still serves the rural community.

Camp Verde, TX

During the Civil War, Texas could not spare Confederate regulars to guard its long frontier, so in 1862 a state "frontier regiment" post rose near the old U.S. Army Camp Verde, part of a chain of outposts spaced a day's ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Troops who often lacked food and supplies still patrolled effectively against raids, while the captured federal camels — some driven by their Egyptian handlers — hauled Confederate cotton to Mexico to trade for salt and other scarce goods. The camp even held a canyon prison for Union soldiers, and its dances featured a camel named "Old Major" and a prisoner-ventriloquist frightening the ladies with unseen pig sounds.

Gonzales, TX

In March 1836, as the Texas Revolution reached its most desperate hour, Sam Houston reached Gonzales to muster a second volunteer army. Word arrived here of the fall of the Alamo and of Santa Anna's advance, and Houston ordered the town put to the torch before withdrawing eastward. That long, calculated retreat set the stage for the decisive Texian victory at San Jacinto on April 21.

Junction, TX

In 1764 King Charles III of Spain ordered the Marqués de Rubí, a field marshal, to inspect every presidio across New Spain's vast northern frontier. Accompanied by engineer and mapmaker Nicolás de Lafora, Rubí toured the borderlands and camped at this spot on July 23, 1767. His resulting report recommended closing most of Texas's small missions — carried out in 1772, leaving only San Antonio and Goliad — a sweeping reorganization of Spain's presence on the frontier.

McAllen, TX

During the tense border troubles of 1916–1917, New York's famed 69th Infantry Regiment camped near McAllen, guarding the Rio Grande and choking off gun-running to the fighters of the Mexican Revolution. The hard tour hardened these men for what came next: the trenches of France, where the regiment earned lasting fame in World War I.

Richmond Heights, MO

At Bellevue and Arlington Avenues, a captured World War I cannon once stood as a memorial to the men of Richmond Heights who served in that war. In a twist common to such trophies, the cannon was itself dismantled and given to the scrap-metal drives that fed the American war effort during World War II. Its story links two generations of service, from the trenches of 1917 to the home-front sacrifices of the 1940s.

Leavenworth, KS

This cannon commemorates the crucial aid France provided to the American colonists during the Revolutionary War, from 1776 to 1782. French money, arms, troops, and naval power — decisive at the 1781 siege of Yorktown — helped secure American independence. The display honors that alliance between the young republic and its European ally.

Brookfield, IL

Dedicated on October 13, 1935, by Edward Feely Post No. 190 of the American Legion, this memorial honors all who served honorably in the armed forces of the United States. Erected between the world wars by veterans of the Chicago suburb of Brookfield, it reflects the American Legion's mission to keep the memory of service alive in the everyday life of the community. A cannon standing sentinel gave the memorial its enduring local name.

Cape Elizabeth, ME

This memorial honors the men and women of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, who served in the armed forces across two centuries, from the American Revolution through the Persian Gulf War. The span 1775–1975 traces the town's contribution to every major American conflict, a roll call of service that touched generation after generation of a small coastal community. Such town memorials gather the whole sweep of a place's wartime sacrifice into a single place of remembrance.

Laredo, TX

In 1840, a coalition of Mexican federalists rose against Santa Anna's centralist regime in Mexico City, proclaiming a short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande with Jesús Cárdenas as president and Laredo as its capital. The rebels recruited support in Texas and won early victories, but after roughly two years the movement collapsed and made peace with the centralists. This modest border building served as the seat of that breakaway government.

Austin, TX

Chauncey Johnson, born in Vermont in 1798, served in the War of 1812 before coming to Texas in 1840. In 1842 he was captured when General Adrian Woll's Mexican force raided San Antonio and was carried off to imprisonment in Mexico, one of many Texans caught in the border conflicts that followed independence. His grave marker was placed by the state in 1936.

Riverside, TX

Benjamin Ingram Harper came from Virginia to Texas in the early 1830s, working as a schoolmaster in Liberty County before the fight for Texas independence swept him up. He fought at the Battle of Concepción and the Siege of Bexar, then raised a company that marched toward the Alamo — arriving too late, but joining the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Rewarded with land and the rank of captain, he lived out his years farming in Walker County, where tradition places his 1863 grave.

Corsicana, TX

A New York native, Charles Henry Allyn served as a Union captain in the Civil War before coming to Texas in 1868 and settling in Corsicana with his wife Angela in 1871. There he became a pillar of the growing town's economy, helping organize its first national bank, savings and loan companies, and cotton mill. He served on the city council and as mayor from 1888 to 1890, remaining active in civic, educational, and church affairs until his death in 1918.

Prairieville, TX

Alabama-born Edward Thomas Broughton settled in Texas as a boy, became a lawyer, and was serving as district attorney in Kaufman when war came in 1861. He helped raise a local company, the Kaufman Light Infantry, which mustered at Prairieville and was renamed the Johnson Guards before joining Colonel John Gregg's 7th Texas Volunteers. Captured at Fort Donelson and again in 1863, sickened in prison yet returning each time to command, Broughton survived the war to serve in the Texas Senate before his death in 1874.

Mt. Vernon, TX

Born in 1823, F. Marion Hastings enlisted from Dade County, Missouri, in 1861 and rode with Sterling Price, Jo Shelby, and John S. Marmaduke through the hard-fought cavalry raids that swept Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Surrendering at Shreveport in June 1865, he came to Texas that autumn and rebuilt a public life on the Franklin County frontier, serving as county commissioner and then county judge into the 1890s. His path from Confederate trooper to local jurist traces the wider story of Southern veterans who shaped Reconstruction-era Texas.

Cotulla, TX

A Georgia native who came to Texas in 1853, Jasper N. Daniel won election to the state legislature in 1859 and served as a Confederate captain during the Civil War. Settling in Cotulla in 1884, he became justice of the peace and then county judge, helping impose order on La Salle County during its rough, lawless frontier era. He and his wife raised sixteen children.

Austin, TX

Jesse Billingsley joined the Texas army in 1835 and led Company C of the First Regiment of Texas Volunteers at San Jacinto. His public life continued through the Republic's early congresses, the 1842 Woll Campaign against a Mexican incursion, and later the Texas state senate. Born in Tennessee in 1810, he died in Bastrop County in 1880.

Muncy Creek Township, PA · est. 1947

John Brady earned his reputation across the colonial wars and the Revolution as a hard frontier soldier, commanding a fortified post on the West Branch of the Susquehanna at present-day Muncy. On April 11, 1779, he was ambushed and killed by Native warriors near here, one of countless settlers and soldiers who fell in the running border warfare that consumed the region.

Sherman, TX

Virginia-born John Henry LeTellier joined the Confederate army in 1861, fighting at Manassas, Williamsburg, Gettysburg, and other battles and taking several wounds. After the war he came to Texas and ran the Sherman Private School from 1871 until his death in 1913. A gifted mathematician and demanding teacher, he trained many students who went on to prominence.

Pottsville, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1816, John Stephen Potts married a cousin of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and served as a justice of the peace and sheriff in Missouri before soldiering for the Confederacy. After the Civil War he came to Texas, paying $500 in gold for Hamilton County sheep range in 1872 and gradually adding land. A devout Baptist and Mason who donated a cemetery site, he was honored when the town of Pottsville was named for him in 1878.

San Antonio, TX

Born in San Antonio in 1797, José Antonio Menchaca was a Tejano who cast his lot with Texas independence and fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. He lived out his long life in the town of his birth, dying in 1879, and this state marker honors him and his wife, Teresa Ramón Menchaca. Their shared memorial stands as one of many placed across Texas in 1936 for the centennial of independence.

Salado, TX

Tennessee-born Milton Wesley Damron came to Texas in the 1840s as part of the Mercer Colony, married Sarah Pennington, and settled in what became Bell County when the colony's original plans fell through. He served as the county's first tax assessor, then joined the Confederate Army, leading a cavalry unit in Indian Territory and Arkansas. Returning to Salado, he worked as postmaster and won election as a legislator, though as a former Confederate he was barred from taking his seat.

Bryan County, GA

Fort McAllister, an earthwork fort guarding the Ogeechee River south of Savannah, was the last obstacle in Sherman's March to the Sea. When Union troops stormed it on December 13, 1864, the defenders fought hand-to-hand rather than yield. Captain Nicholas Clinch's refusal to surrender — answering the demand with his sword and absorbing a dozen wounds before being overpowered — became one of the defense's most-remembered moments.

Liberty Township, PA · est. 1964

This memorial marks the graves of ten frontier militiamen of Captain Phillips' company, killed on July 16, 1780, during the brutal backcountry fighting of the Revolutionary War. Along Pennsylvania's western frontier, British-allied Native war parties raided isolated settlements, and local rangers like Phillips' men bore the danger of defending them. Their deaths were one small, bloody episode in a war whose frontier front is often overshadowed by the great eastern battles.

Washington, PA · est. 1947

Born on this site in 1860, Philo McGiffin graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at a time when America's own fleet offered few commissions, and so he sailed to China to help build and train its modern navy. In 1894 he served aboard a Chinese warship at the Battle of the Yalu River, where the fleet fought Japan to a bloody standstill. Gravely wounded, he never fully recovered and died three years later.

Henderson, TX

This marker honors Captain Robert Smith, who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836—the decisive engagement in which Texian forces under Sam Houston won independence from Mexico in less than twenty minutes of fighting. Veterans of that campaign became the founding generation of the Republic of Texas, and many, like Smith, settled the frontier counties they had helped free.

Columbus, TX

Virginia-born William G. Hunt came to Columbus around 1831 and threw himself into the making of Texas, fighting at the 1835 Battle of Gonzales — the "come and take it" opening of the Texas Revolution — and in the capture of San Antonio that followed. A farmer and trader who later served in the 13th Texas Infantry during the Civil War, he bought this house in 1859 and lived here until 1898. Built around 1858, it is regarded as the oldest house in Columbus, still holding its original pine floors and ceilings.

Blossom, TX

This 1½-story Southern-style homestead was built in 1871 by Captain William E. Moore and his wife, Sarah Elizabeth Neal. During the Civil War Moore commanded the 'Shreveport Grays,' and in 1872—after a campaign in which he famously shared a buggy with his opponent—he won a state senate seat. He served under Governor Richard Coke, whose administration marked the end of Reconstruction in Texas.

Beeville, TX

Born in Nacogdoches County to early Texas settlers, A. C. Jones became a cattleman and county sheriff before serving four years in Colonel John S. "Rip" Ford's Confederate cavalry, fighting at Palmito Hill—the last land battle of the Civil War, waged weeks after Lee's surrender. In peacetime he helped raise the capital to bring railroads to Beeville and led the town's banking and oil-mill enterprises.

Hempsted, TX

Alfred H. Wyly led a volunteer company at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, the eighteen-minute rout that secured Texas independence from Mexico. Volunteer captains like Wyly raised and commanded the citizen-soldiers who made up Sam Houston's army, ordinary settlers who left their farms to fight. Wyly lived on in the young republic and state until his death at Hempstead in 1867.

Austin, TX

Andrew Briscoe was among the Anglo Texans who took up arms in 1835, serving at Anahuac and the capture of San Antonio before signing the Texas Declaration of Independence and commanding a company at San Jacinto. Afterward he became the first chief justice of the Harrisburg municipality. This 1936 centennial marker honors his part in Texas independence.

Belton, TX

Andrew Caddell was a North Carolina-born soldier who marched with the Texian army in the 1836 revolution, standing in the ranks as a private at the Battle of San Jacinto that won Texas its independence. He later rose to command a company of volunteers, part of the generation of frontier settlers who fought for and then built the young Republic of Texas. He and his wife Rhoda made their lives in the Bell County country, where this marker records their years.

Baird, TX

Andrew Jackson Berry was born in Indiana in 1816 and lived long enough to bridge two defining conflicts of 19th-century Texas. As a young man he fought at San Jacinto, the 1836 battle that won Texas its independence, and decades later he served as an officer in the Confederate Army. He died at Baird in 1899, one of the dwindling number of men who could claim both distinctions.

Erie, PA · est. 1946

In the spring of 1898 the Spanish-American War carried the U.S. Navy across the Pacific to the Spanish-held Philippines. At Manila Bay, Commodore George Dewey's squadron destroyed the Spanish fleet in a single morning, and his calm words to the captain of his flagship Olympia became one of the most quoted commands in American naval lore. That captain, Charles Vernon Gridley, was already gravely ill and died weeks later; he rests in this Erie cemetery.