Military & Wartime

Brackettville, TX

Fort Clark was established on the Texas frontier in 1852 and garrisoned by varying troops for nearly a century. This limestone guardhouse went up in the 1870s during a wave of expansion, its design adapting military standards to local stone and the harsh climate. When a new stockade was built in 1942, the old guardhouse became headquarters for the military police, and it still wears its 1930s look.

Brackettville, TX

Built in 1932 on the parade-ground edge of Fort Clark, this brick-and-stucco hall replaced an older post building that had done double duty as church, courtroom, and gathering place. Its clean, clear-span military lines were dressed up with classical pilasters, arched windows, and a pediment, and for a dozen years it drew soldiers to the movies. When the Army closed the fort in 1944, the community that grew up as Fort Clark Springs kept the building alive as its town hall.

Brackettville, TX

From its founding in 1852 until it closed in 1946, Fort Clark guarded the California road and the Texas frontier against raids and outlaws, named for a major killed in the Mexican War. Union troops abandoned it after Texas seceded in 1861 and reoccupied it in 1866, later relying on the celebrated Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts and a nearby Indian reservation. Nearly every U.S. Cavalry regiment served here, and in World War II the 2nd and 11th Cavalry trained on its grounds before the post was inactivated in 1946.

Austin, TX

In the first anxious years of the Republic of Texas, the young nation strung frontier posts along its edge to guard settlers from raids. This site marks Fort Colorado — also known as Coleman's Fort — a short-lived station of the late 1830s garrisoned by early ranging companies on the Colorado River near present-day Austin. It stood only about two years before being abandoned as the line of settlement shifted.

San Angelo, TX

Established in 1867 by the 4th Cavalry at a junction of the Butterfield and Goodnight trails, Fort Concho anchored a line of forts guarding the Texas frontier from northeastern Texas to El Paso. Its sandstone barracks, hospital, and officers' quarters housed a remarkable roster of commanders, including Ranald Mackenzie, who led campaigns against Native resistance, and Benjamin Grierson, commander of the Black "buffalo soldiers" of the 10th Cavalry. The Army abandoned the post in 1889 and it passed into private hands.

Lemoyne, PA · est. 1947

In the tense summer of 1863, as Robert E. Lee's army pushed north, defenders threw up earthen breastworks here to guard the approaches to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital and a vital rail and supply hub. On June 29, Confederate scouts probed toward these works but pulled back, and days later the campaign's decisive fighting erupted at Gettysburg instead. These humble earthworks mark the farthest reach of the Southern advance on the Susquehanna.

Lemoyne, PA · est. 1953

In June 1863, as Robert E. Lee's army drove north toward the Susquehanna in the campaign that ended at Gettysburg, panicked authorities threw up earthworks on Hummel's Heights to shield the state capital at Harrisburg. Named for General Darius Couch, commander of the Department of the Susquehanna, these breastworks were part of a hasty defensive line manned by militia and emergency troops. The expected Confederate assault on Harrisburg never fell, as Lee recalled his forces to concentrate at Gettysburg.

New Kensington, PA

This marker commemorates Fort Crawford, a frontier stockade from the era of the Revolutionary War when the Allegheny Valley was a dangerous borderland of raids and militia defense. The four-ton stone and bronze plaque were placed by the Massy Harbison Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and dedicated on May 13, 1942, during the 150th anniversary of the Logan's Ferry Presbyterian Church, on whose land the fort once stood. The chapter's namesake, Massy Harbison, was herself a famed survivor of frontier captivity in the region.

Burnet, TX

This stone structure is one of the eight original buildings of Fort Croghan, the U.S. Army post that guarded the Hill Country frontier from 1849 to 1853. After the soldiers left, the building served frontier "Minute Men" and local settlers, extending its usefulness well beyond its military years. It is a tangible remnant of the fortified line that once marked the western edge of American settlement.

Marfa, TX

Begun in 1911 as Camp Marfa, this remote West Texas post first supplied Army units patrolling the border during the upheavals of the Mexican Revolution. Renamed for Civil War general David Allen Russell, it became a permanent installation in 1929 and, after a brief closure, reopened with artillery units. During World War II it swelled into a training camp that hosted a chemical warfare battalion and German prisoners of war before closing for good in 1946.

Montgomery Township, PA · est. 1946

Around 1755, as the French and Indian War set the frontier ablaze, Philip Davis's land became the site of a fortified refuge where nearby families could take shelter from raids. It stood as the southernmost link in a chain of such strongholds stretching across the Pennsylvania backcountry. In an age before organized armies patrolled the interior, these settlers' forts were the difference between survival and abandonment.

Fort Davis, TX

Fort Davis was established in 1854 to guard travelers on the San Antonio–El Paso Road and named for Jefferson Davis, then U.S. Secretary of War. Federal troops abandoned it at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 and reoccupied it in 1867, after which its soldiers—including Black regulars—helped bring stability to the far West Texas frontier until the post was deactivated in 1891. Its ruins and restored buildings remain among the best-preserved frontier military posts in the Southwest.

Montgomery Township, PA · est. 1931

Around 1754, as tensions with France and Native nations flared into the French and Indian War, the Welsh settler Philip Davis built a private fort on his plantation here to shelter frontier families from raids. Davis was a local patriot and tax collector active in the Presbytery of New Castle. His fortified home was one of many improvised strongholds that dotted the exposed Pennsylvania backcountry.

Whitehall, PA · est. 2001

On the north bank of Coplay Creek, Swiss immigrant Adam Deshler raised a sturdy stone house in 1760 that doubled as a fortified refuge during the dangerous years of the French and Indian War. Frontier families sheltered behind its walls when raids threatened the scattered settlements of the Lehigh Valley. The building outlived its garrison days by nearly two centuries, passing through the Deshler family and later the Coplay Cement Company before finally coming down around 1940.

Iredell County, NC

Built by the colony in 1756, Fort Dobbs guarded North Carolina's western frontier during the French and Indian War. Garrisoned by provincial troops until 1762, it offered settlers refuge from raids and anchored the colony's defenses in a contested backcountry. Its site lies a mile north of this marker.

Eagle Pass, TX

Established in 1849 on the Rio Grande, Fort Duncan guarded the California emigrant trail and anchored campaigns against the Lipan Apache in the newly won Southwest. Its long life mirrored the era's conflicts: abandoned and regarrisoned amid border raids, briefly held as a Confederate "Rio Grande Station" during the Civil War, and later home to the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts organized here in 1870. Reoccupied during the Mexican border troubles of 1916 and used as a World War I training camp, it finally became a city park in 1938.

Eagle Pass, TX

Fort Duncan was established in 1849 by Captain S. Burbank of the First U.S. Infantry to guard the Rio Grande frontier and the western lines of communication opened after the Mexican-American War. Federal troops garrisoned the post until the eve of the Civil War in 1861 and returned in 1868, and it later became known as Camp Eagle Pass. It stood as a linchpin of American military presence on the border for more than a century.

Eagle Pass, TX

Built around 1868 after the U.S. Army reoccupied Fort Duncan following the Civil War, this barracks witnessed aviation history in 1911 when the Army's first military cross-country flight, launched from Fort McIntosh in Laredo, landed nearby. The Army abandoned the post by 1932, and Eagle Pass later turned the barracks into a country club and Boy Scout lodge. During World War II it doubled as an officers' club for the Eagle Pass Army Air Force Advanced Flying School.

Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 1947

Begun in April 1769, Fort Durkee was the first stronghold raised by Connecticut settlers in the Wyoming Valley, named for their leader. It became a flashpoint of the First Pennamite War of 1769–71, the armed contest between Connecticut Yankees and Pennsylvania authorities over who rightfully held the land. The fort stood just a thousand feet from its rival, Fort Wyoming, a measure of how close the two colonial claims pressed against each other.

Mobeetie, TX

When Fort Elliott was established in 1875 to secure the Texas Panhandle, teamster-merchant J. J. Long was hired to supply its flagpole. He cut two great cedar trees in the breaks near Antelope Hills, thirty miles away, hauled them by wagon, and fashioned this fifty-foot pole. After the fort closed in 1890 Long bought the pole for his store, and it later stood at the Mobeetie school for two decades before being raised again here in 1949.

Lynn Township, PA · est. 1951

Around 1756, at the height of the French and Indian War, a log blockhouse rose just north of here as one link in a chain of frontier defenses guarding the settled valleys south of Blue Mountain. Its garrison watched the country between the Schuylkill and Lehigh Rivers, offering refuge to farm families when raiding parties struck the exposed Pennsylvania backcountry. Such small forts were the difference between staying and fleeing for the region's colonists.

Franklin, PA · est. 1947

In 1787, with the Revolution won but the frontier still contested, U.S. troops under Captain Jonathan Heart raised Fort Franklin just west of here at the strategic waters of French Creek. It was the first American military post in the region, built to shield the fragile new settlements of northwestern Pennsylvania during the tense years of the Northwest Indian conflicts. The fort anchored American authority in a corner of the country France and Britain had once fought over.

West Penn Township, PA · est. 1955

In the mid-1750s the Pennsylvania frontier erupted into violence as the French and Indian War spread down the Blue Mountain, and colonists petitioned for a chain of provincial forts to shield their scattered farms. This small stockade, thrown up in 1756 and named for Benjamin Franklin—then charged with organizing the colony's frontier defenses—was one such outpost. It saw little action and was given up the following year, a reminder of how quickly and cheaply many of these hastily built strongholds rose and fell.

Delaware Township, PA · est. 1947

As the Revolution reached the Pennsylvania frontier, settlers fortified Jacob Freeland's house in 1778, ringing it with a stockade against raids. On July 29, 1779, a force of British and allied Indians overwhelmed the small post, and its garrison of 21 were killed or captured—one of the sharp, deadly clashes that made the upper Susquehanna a war zone.

South Union Township, PA · est. 1946

Around 1764, on the old Catawba trail through the Pennsylvania backcountry, Thomas Gaddis raised a fortified house where settlers could take refuge during frontier raids. Such private strongholds were lifelines in a region where colonial and Native conflicts made isolated homesteads perilous. Gaddis himself later served as a colonel in the Pennsylvania Continental Line during the Revolution.

Towson, MD

Fort Garrison was built in 1693 as a frontier defense in colonial Maryland, part of the network of fortified strongpoints raised to guard scattered settlers in an uncertain borderland. This stone garrison house stood watch over the edge of English settlement, and was marked in 1973 by the Colonial Dames of the XVII Century.

Gatesville, TX

After the Mexican-American War, the U.S. Army strung a line of frontier outposts across Texas, and in 1849 it built Fort Gates, the last of that cordon, to shield settlers from raids along the advancing frontier. Named for Mexican-American War veteran Maj. Collinson Reed Gates, the seventeen-building post drew settling families to its protection and became the nucleus of the surrounding community. The garrison moved on in 1852, and in 1854 the settlement it had seeded gave rise to Coryell County, with Gatesville soon becoming the county seat.

Whitney, TX

Fort Graham rose in March 1849 on the site of a Waco Indian village, one of a chain of frontier military posts the U.S. Army planted across Texas as Anglo settlement pushed westward. Established by Brevet Major R. A. Arnold of the Second Dragoons, it honored Lt. Col. William M. Graham, killed at Molino del Rey during the recent war with Mexico. The post was abandoned in 1853 as the frontier line moved farther west, and its barracks were later reconstructed in part from the original stone as a community gathering place.

Lewistown, PA · est. 1947

Fort Granville was raised in 1755–56 as one link in the chain of stockades meant to shield Pennsylvania's frontier settlers during the French and Indian War. On July 30, 1756, a French and Indian force under Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers overwhelmed and burned it, carrying off captives. Its fall exposed how fragile the colony's western defenses were in the war's early, disastrous years.

Lewistown, PA · est. 1916

Raised in 1755–56 on the high bank of the Juniata, Fort Granville guarded a vulnerable stretch of the Pennsylvania frontier during the French and Indian War. It was attacked twice, and in July 1756 a large French and Indian force overwhelmed it, killing its commander, Lieut. Edward Armstrong, and either killing or carrying off the entire garrison. The loss was a shock that helped provoke Col. John Armstrong's retaliatory raid on the Delaware town of Kittanning weeks later.

Port Huron, MI

Fort Gratiot was built in 1814 by Captain Charles Gratiot at the foot of Lake Huron, established in the closing months of the War of 1812 to secure this strategic frontier passage. The post served the young United States until it was abandoned in 1879. The Ottawawa Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution erected this marker in 1914 on the centennial of the fort's founding.

Belton vicinity, TX

In November 1836, just months after Texas won its independence, George B. Erath and twenty Texas Rangers threw up a picket fort on the Little River as a shield for settlers against Indian raids. Known variously as Fort Griffin, Fort Smith, and the Little River Fort, it had been abandoned as a military post by the time the Santa Fe Expedition camped nearby in 1841. Yet frontier families kept using the stockade as a refuge for years afterward.

Halifax Township, PA · est. 1946

In 1756, at the height of the French and Indian War, Col. William Clapham built Fort Halifax on the Susquehanna as one link in a chain of provincial forts strung along the Pennsylvania frontier. These stockades sheltered settlers and supplied troops during a war that saw brutal raids sweep the backcountry. The fort itself was short-lived, but it anchored the colony's defensive line during the conflict's most dangerous years.

Halifax Township, PA · est. 1926

When the French and Indian War set Pennsylvania's frontier aflame in the mid-1750s, the province threw up a chain of forts to shield its scattered settlements. Fort Halifax was one such post, built in 1756 under Colonel William Clapham along the Susquehanna corridor. Little more than a stockaded strongpoint, it anchored the line of defense that kept the war from rolling deeper into the colony.

Elko County, NV

Established in July 1867 by Captain Samuel Smith, Fort Halleck stood guard over the California Emigrant Trail, the Overland mail route, and the advancing Central Pacific Railroad during conflicts with the Goshute and Western Shoshone. Named for Civil War general-in-chief Henry Wager Halleck, it grew into a 20-building post and headquarters for the Nevada Military District. Its troops ranged far afield—against the Modoc in 1873, the Nez Perce in 1877, the Bannock in 1878, and the Apache in 1885. As the frontier quieted, the Army closed the fort in December 1886.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1967

Built on Benjamin Franklin's direction and named for provincial councilman James Hamilton, Fort Hamilton guarded the Pocono frontier from 1755 to 1757 as part of a defensive chain raised during the French and Indian War. When violence threatened the scattered settlers of the region, forts like this one offered the only refuge. It was abandoned in 1757 and later succeeded by Fort Penn.

Stroudsburg, PA · est. 1930

Fort Hamilton was one of a chain of frontier forts that Benjamin Franklin directed to be built across Pennsylvania during the French and Indian War. Raised in January 1756 by Captain Levi Trump, it was garrisoned by a company of some forty men and passed through a succession of commanders over the next several years. The post guarded settlers in the Pocono frontier against raids during the conflict.

Marietta, OH

Fort Harmar was one of the first military posts the young United States built in the Northwest Territory, raised in 1785 at the mouth of the Muskingum River where it meets the Ohio. Garrisoned by federal troops until 1790 and serving as headquarters for General Josiah Harmar, it guarded the frontier and oversaw early relations — and negotiations — with the region's Native nations before the town of Marietta rose across the river. This monument, placed in 1892, marks the fort's site.

Beaufort County, NC

Fort Hill was the site of Confederate batteries overlooking the Pamlico River, positioned to help besiege the Union-held town of Washington in the spring of 1863. From these works, Gen. D. H. Hill's forces pressed the Federal garrison during the campaign for the town. The site lies about five miles east.

Gatesville, TX

On January 15, 1942, the U.S. Army established a tank destroyer training center near Killeen that became Camp Hood, later Fort Hood. To train tens of thousands of soldiers for World War II combat, the government acquired more than 88,000 acres, taking in about twenty small Coryell County communities settled since the 1850s. Within days and weeks families watched homes and churches vanish and moved beloved dead to new cemeteries, enduring a hard recovery even as they banded together into a lasting community of memory.

Palestine, TX

Around 1836, on the orders of Sam Houston himself, settlers raised a stockade fort on the public square of the frontier town of Houston, deep in what was then Houston County. The fort guarded pioneers on the edge of the young Republic of Texas until it was abandoned about 1841, and the town gave way to Palestine as the county seat a few years later. The old fort site was eventually absorbed into the home of Texas statesman John H. Reagan, who kept the name alive.

Palestine, TX

Raised in 1835–36 as a stockade and heavy-log blockhouse of the fledgling Republic of Texas, Fort Houston protected the settlers who founded the pioneer town of Houston. Friendly Indians came to trade at its walls even as wary families slept inside the twenty-five-foot-square blockhouse, and the men who gathered here formed one of the first Ranger units in Texas. The fort guarded a wide stretch of frontier until it was abandoned about 1841, its ground later folded into the home of statesman John H. Reagan.

Palestine, TX

When Joseph Jordan and William S. McDonald donated some 500 acres in 1835 for the town of Houston—later Fort Houston—the plan set aside a "public burying ground" that survives as the community's last physical trace. Its oldest marked grave dates to 1840, and among those laid to rest are victims of disease and frontier hardship, two San Jacinto veterans in unmarked graves, and, in a soldiers' plot marked by a boulder, veterans of the Republic of Texas and a War of 1812 soldier, General Nathaniel Smith. Though the town was abandoned after Palestine became county seat in 1846, the cemetery remains in use today.

Sierra Vista, AZ

Established by the U.S. Army in 1877 in the rugged country of southern Arizona, Fort Huachuca was a frontier post in the final campaigns against the Apache during the Indian Wars. It later became a home of the famed Buffalo Soldiers, the African American regiments who served across the Western frontier, and it remains an active installation today—now a National Historic Landmark. Few army posts trace such an unbroken line from the frontier era into the modern age.

Susquehanna Township, PA · est. 1947

As the French and Indian War set the Pennsylvania frontier ablaze, colonists built a stockaded blockhouse here in 1755–56 to shelter settlers and to stage the construction of Fort Augusta upriver on the Susquehanna. For a few tense years it was a link in the province's chain of defenses; once the danger passed after 1763, it was abandoned and crumbled into ruin. The ground today holds the Fort Hunter Museum.

Susquehanna Township, PA · est. 1916

Built in the anxious winter of 1755–56, Fort Hunter was a blockhouse ringed by a stockade, one link in the chain of defenses Pennsylvania threw up along the Susquehanna after frontier raids began. It served less as a battlefield than as a supply depot and gathering point for troops moving through the valley during the French and Indian War. By 1814 the danger was a memory, and its last traces vanished when a new building rose on the ground.

Middle Smithfield Township, PA · est. 1947

In 1756, with the French and Indian War exposing Pennsylvania's undefended backcountry to devastating raids, the colonial government ordered a chain of frontier forts built along the mountains. Fort Hyndshaw anchored the northern end of that line, a stockaded refuge and garrison post guarding the settlers of the upper Delaware. These modest works were less battlefields than shelters where frontier families could ride out the terror of wartime raiding.

Uvalde, TX

West of San Antonio the road forked toward El Paso and toward Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande, and travelers here "put on their guns" at the edge of contested country. During the Civil War, Fort Inge and Camp Dix anchored a thin Confederate and state defense line stretched a day's ride apart from the Red River to the Rio Grande, guarding against raids while wagon trains hauled cotton to Mexico in exchange for scarce goods. Though Uvalde County had voted heavily against secession, many local men served, and the war years brought hard times and renewed frontier attacks.

Ballard County, KY

In 1780, frontier commander George Rogers Clark built Fort Jefferson here as part of an ambitious plan conceived by Virginia's Governor Patrick Henry and carried on by his successor, Thomas Jefferson, to secure the young nation's western claims. The next year the Chickasaw, angered by settlement on their land, besieged the fort for five days until Clark arrived with reinforcements; the post was abandoned soon after. The strategic spot was resettled following the Jackson Purchase and later served as an important Union position in the Civil War.

Ballard County, KY

After Confederate forces seized Columbus in September 1861, Union troops occupied nearby Fort Jefferson, one of the first Kentucky positions held for the Union. From this base along the Mississippi, General Ulysses S. Grant directed a demonstration against Columbus in January 1862, and troops staged here helped capture Fort Henry the following month. It was one of four area river ports serving as Union supply bases for the war's western theater.

South Centre Township, PA · est. 1948

During the Revolution the Susquehanna frontier was a war zone, and settlers here fortified a house on the riverbank as a refuge between 1778 and 1780 until raiders destroyed it. The violence along this valley was part of the wider frontier warfare that pitted settlers against British-allied Native nations far from the war's famous battlefields. In a later, more peaceful chapter, the ground passed to James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration and a framer of the Constitution.

Ozona, TX

When Texas seceded and U.S. forts along the frontier were surrendered at the start of the Civil War, Fort Lancaster became part of the Confederacy's thinly held far-western line, garrisoned by the 2nd Texas Cavalry. It guarded the supply route feeding the 1861–62 Confederate campaign into Arizona and New Mexico—an ambitious bid to stretch the Confederacy from ocean to ocean. Between escorting supply trains and watching for Indian raids, soldiers passed dull hours with a camp newspaper and by shooting at coyotes.

Waterford, PA · est. 1922

Here the French built Fort Le Boeuf in 1752 as one link in a chain of posts meant to seal their claim to the Ohio country. In 1753 a 21-year-old Major George Washington arrived carrying a letter from Virginia's governor demanding the French withdraw from lands Britain also claimed. The French politely refused, and the collision of empires that followed erupted into the French and Indian War.

West Brunswick Township, PA · est. 1949

After General Edward Braddock's disastrous 1755 defeat near Fort Duquesne left the Pennsylvania frontier exposed, colonists hurriedly threw up a chain of stockaded forts to shield settlers from raids during the French and Indian War. Fort Lebanon was one such outpost, later renamed Fort William in 1758 as the frontier defenses were reorganized. Its site, marked just off the road below, recalls a time when this quiet countryside was a tense military frontier.

Waterford, PA · est. 1946

This ground guarded the portage route linking Lake Erie to the Ohio Valley, and three successive forts rose here as empires contested the region. The French built the first in 1753 to secure their road south, abandoning it as their fortunes collapsed in 1759. A British fort followed in 1760 but was burned during Pontiac's uprising in 1763, and finally an American fort went up in 1794 to shield settlers moving west.

Waterford, PA · est. 1951

Here once stood the French Fort LeBoeuf, part of the chain of outposts France built to hold the Ohio Country in the 1750s. It was to this fort in 1753 that a 21-year-old George Washington carried a message from Virginia's governor demanding the French withdraw—his first public mission, and one of the sparks that helped ignite the French and Indian War. The Judson House, built in 1820, now occupies the historic ground.

Ligonier, PA · est. 1946

Fort Ligonier rose here in 1758 as a forward base for the Forbes Expedition, the British campaign that drove the French from the forks of the Ohio during the French and Indian War. Under Colonel James Burd its garrison beat back a French and Indian attack that October, and in 1763 it stood as the only small western fort never taken during Pontiac's War. From its shelter, Colonel Bouquet launched the relief that saved Fort Pitt.

Banquete, TX

A Spanish fort rose near a Lipan Apache village on this site in 1728, the settlement bearing an Aztec-derived name. Regarrisoned by Mexican troops around 1831 to discourage Anglo-American colonization, the earthen post became a flashpoint of the Texas Revolution: Texan forces captured it in November 1835 and turned back a counterattack the next day. It saw fighting again in 1842 before being abandoned to ruin.

Dublin Township, PA · est. 1924

In 1756, as war between Britain and France spilled across the Pennsylvania frontier, the colony raised a chain of provincial forts to shield its exposed backcountry settlements. Fort Littleton was one of these strongpoints, ordered up under Governor Robert Hunter Morris and planted on this knoll to guard a vital road through the mountains. In the fear-filled years of the French and Indian War, such stockades were refuge and rallying point for settlers who lived within reach of raiding parties.

Peters Township, PA · est. 1947

Built by the provincial government in 1756, Fort Loudon guarded the frontier during the French and Indian War and in 1758 served as a staging point for Gen. John Forbes's expedition that captured Fort Duquesne. In 1765 the fort became a flashpoint of a different kind when frontiersmen led by James Smith — the "Black Boys" — forced a British garrison to withdraw, an early act of armed colonial defiance. The site thus spans both the imperial war and the friction that would build toward revolution.