Military & Wartime

Del Rio, TX

Established as Camp San Felipe in 1876 as an outpost of Fort Clark, this U.S. Army post was one of a chain of forts defending the isolated settlements of the Southwest Texas frontier. General E. O. C. Ord created it to guard against raiding parties crossing the Pecos and Devil's Rivers. After the town of Del Rio grew up around it, the camp took the town's name; with the end of Indian raids by 1890, troops moved on and the post was abandoned in 1891.

Gainesville, TX

In the anxious months after Pearl Harbor, the little North Texas town of Gainesville transformed almost overnight into a training ground for war. Activated in August 1942 and named for Texas-born General Robert Lee Howze, Camp Howze drilled infantry for the fight in Europe while also holding German prisoners of war and supporting air operations. Camp exchanges, libraries, chapels, theaters, and a base newspaper — the Camp Howze Howitzer — sustained the soldiers, and the installation reshaped Gainesville's economy and growth.

Juno, TX

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.

Palacios, TX

Begun in 1925 as a summer training ground for the Texas National Guard on land donated by Palacios citizens, this bayside camp grew into one of the U.S. military's largest field-training sites after it was renamed for Major John A. Hulen in 1930. During World War II the War Department expanded it for anti-aircraft training and quarters for 12,000 personnel, and from 1943 to 1945 it held German prisoners of war. Returned to the Guard in 1946, it was gradually dismantled and the land sold off by the mid-1960s.

Edna, TX

In the anxious months after San Jacinto, part of the fledgling Republic of Texas army camped here from December 1836 until President Sam Houston furloughed the restless troops in May 1837. Commanded first by Felix Huston and then by Albert Sidney Johnston, the encampment reflected the young republic's uneasy standoff with Mexico. Its darkest moment came when Captain Henry Teal was assassinated in his tent one night in May 1837, a killing that still shadows the site's memory.

Village of Garden City, NY

As the Great War ended, the flat plains of Garden City hosted Camp Mills, a major mobilization and embarkation post for troops bound to and from Europe. From February to September 1919 a sprawling thirty-building complex here served as a base hospital, caring for roughly two thousand soldiers at a time as they returned from the front. Doughboys recovering from wounds, gas exposure, and the era's devastating influenza passed through these wards on their way home.

Imperial County, CA

This marks the site of Camp Pilot Knob, one of the sprawling camps of the Desert Training Center that General George S. Patton Jr. established across the Southwest in 1942. Covering thousands of square miles of Mojave and Sonoran desert, it was the largest military training ground ever created, hardening American troops for combat in North Africa and beyond during World War II. Soldiers endured brutal heat here to prepare for the realities of desert warfare.

Sabinal, TX

Camp Sabinal was established on July 12, 1856 by Captain Albert G. Brackett of the Second U.S. Cavalry to guard the San Antonio–El Paso Road and the frontier settlers strung along it. Federal troops held the post only until November of that year, and it later served as a Texas Ranger camp. Little remains but the ground where it stood.

Brady vicinity, TX

From 1862 to 1864, Captain W. G. O'Brien's company of mounted volunteers was stationed here as part of the Frontier Regiment, a Texas force raised to guard the settlement line against raids while the Civil War drew men and resources east. In 1864 the regiment was folded into the Confederate Army as the Forty-sixth Texas Cavalry. The camp reflects the double burden Texans carried during the war — fighting for the Confederacy while defending an exposed frontier.

Kerrville, TX

The U.S. Army opened Camp Verde in 1855 to guard the Texas frontier, and the next year it became headquarters for one of the country's strangest military experiments: some forty camels imported at Secretary of War Jefferson Davis's urging, tested as pack animals for crossing the arid Southwest before the idea was judged impractical. Confederate forces took the post in 1861; the U.S. Army returned in 1865 and abandoned it in 1869. The camel corps remains one of the most memorable curiosities of the antebellum army.

Camp Wood, TX

Camp Wood was established in May 1857 to guard the San Antonio–El Paso road and the Rio Grande Valley against raids, part of the chain of frontier posts the U.S. Army strung across Texas before the Civil War. It stood only a few years, abandoned in March 1861 when federal troops were withdrawn from Texas at the outbreak of the war. Its brief life marks the fragile military presence that shadowed westward travel.

Sherman, TX

Founded in 1871 as the Sherman Private School but known to all as "The Cap'n's," this school for boys was run by former Confederate captain John H. LeTellier. A demanding teacher who drilled his pupils in English, spelling, and math, he also joined their games, told war stories, and played guitar at upstairs dances. The school held high standards and turned out many future community leaders until it closed at his death in 1913.

Clifton, TX

R.G. Grant built a water-powered wooden mill on the Bosque River here in 1857, and during the Civil War the building served as a commissary and storehouse for the Confederate Army. Under later owner William Kemp, a new stone mill supplied flour and cornmeal hauled by ox cart to frontier settlements and forts across West Texas, and former governor and U.S. senator Richard Coke once held an interest in it. Rebuilt with a distinctive mansard roof and cupola, the mill later became an electric power plant before it was demolished in 1915.

Lancaster, TX

In 1862, with the Confederacy scrambling to arm itself, a partnership of Dallas-area men set up a small factory here to manufacture pistols for the State of Texas. Frontier Texas had little heavy industry, so improvised arms works like this one were vital to supplying troops far from the Southern manufacturing centers of the East.

Bastrop, TX

In 1862, as the Confederacy scrambled to arm itself, N. B. Tanner established a factory at Bastrop to manufacture guns and bayonets for the war effort. It operated until the Confederacy's collapse in 1865. Such small, improvised arms works reflected the South's chronic struggle to supply its armies.

Lakeside, TX

As Civil War veterans aged into the twentieth century, communities across the South built spaces to honor and care for them. Fort Worth businessman Khleber Van Zandt organized a large United Confederate Veterans camp in 1889, and by 1901 it had chartered a 373-acre park for the "recreation, refuge and relief" of old soldiers and their families. The grounds hosted picnics and statewide reunions for two decades before the dwindling ranks of survivors led the association to dissolve in the 1920s.

Houston, TX

A Buffalo Bayou shipping warehouse on this site was pressed into service during the Civil War as a compound for Union prisoners of war, holding some 350 Federals captured in early 1863 by General John B. Magruder's Confederate forces. Houston was a vital Confederate center, home to training fields, hospitals, foundries, and rail lines, and served as headquarters for the Military District of Texas. The city's several prison compounds were part of that wartime machinery.

Rio Grande City, TX

On the eve of the Civil War, the lower Rio Grande Valley was thrown into turmoil by partisan leader Juan Cortina. On December 27, 1859, his band was surprised at daybreak here by U.S. Army troops under Major Heintzelman, joined by Texas Rangers, and scattered in defeat, with Cortina fleeing across the river. Regarrisoning of nearby Ringgold Barracks calmed the border, but raids flared again during and after the war until Cortina's power finally waned.

Point Comfort, TX

This point on the Texas coast served as an early landing where supplies were unloaded for the interior. During the Texas Revolution, Captain Jack Shackelford's Alabama volunteers, the "Red Rovers," came ashore here on their way to the fighting. A town founded at the site in 1836 was short-lived, burned in an Indian raid in 1840, and the state marked the spot in 1936.

Segovia, TX

Creed Taylor built a two-story native-stone ranch house here in 1869–71, reputed to be the finest home west of San Antonio before fire destroyed it in 1926. Taylor's own life reads like a chronicle of frontier Texas: he fought at Gonzales, Concepción, and the Siege of Bexar in the revolution, rode with Jack Hays's Texas Rangers through the Bandera Pass and Plum Creek fights, and served in the Mexican War of 1846. A rebuilt house on the site burned again in 1956.

Weches, TX

Daniel McLean first came to Texas in 1813 with the Gutierrez-Magee expedition and survived the disastrous Battle of the Medina. He returned as a member of Austin's original colony, settling this league in 1821 as the first permanent resident of the area now in Houston County. He and his brother-in-law were killed in a raid in 1837, and he lies buried near this marker.

San Antonio, TX

Built in 1734 for prominent Bexar citizens Geronimo and Javiera Cantu de la Garza, this block-long Spanish colonial compound had limestone walls three feet thick and lush gardens. Generations later, José Antonio de la Garza used its vault to safeguard merchants' valuables and, granted royal permission in 1818, minted the small coins called 'jolas'—making the home likely the first mint in Texas. During the 1835 Siege of Bexar, Ben Milam's troops battled two days to seize the fortress-like compound as their headquarters, and Milam died taking the city.

Willis, TX

Founded before 1840 in a rich plantation district, Danville grew into a thriving trade center with fifteen businesses, churches, and good schools. When its leaders refused right-of-way to the Houston & Great Northern Railway in the 1870s, commerce fled to the new railroad town of Willis, and Danville faded until only Sheperd Hill Cemetery remained. Among its people was Jonathan Lindley, who died defending the Alamo in March 1836.

Centerville, TX

In 1840, settlers on the edge of the Republic of Texas raised a blockhouse here as headquarters for the Boggy and Trinity Rangers under Captain Thomas N. B. Greer. Meant to guard against raids in unsettled country, the post lent its name, Fort Boggy, to a community that lingered for years afterward.

Burnet, TX

Fort Croghan was one of a line of U.S. Army posts thrown up across the Texas frontier at mid-century, established here in 1849 by Lieutenant C. H. Tyler of the Second Dragoons. Its job was to shield settlers pushing into the Hill Country from raids, and by 1853 the frontier had moved so far west that the fort was no longer needed. Its brief life traces the restless edge of American settlement in the years just after Texas joined the Union.

Mobeetie, TX

Established in June 1875, Fort Elliott was among the last military posts built in Texas as the U.S. Army sought to force Indigenous peoples off the Panhandle plains. Around its walls sprang up Mobeetie, a rough rendezvous for buffalo hunters and traders, until the fort was abandoned in 1889 and the frontier era it enforced drew to a close.

Sabine Pass, TX

At Sabine Pass in September 1863, a small Confederate garrison in the unfinished earthwork Fort Griffin — built of railroad iron and ship's timbers, and manned largely by Irish immigrants from Galveston and Houston — repulsed a Federal fleet carrying thousands of invasion troops. Lt. Richard W. Dowling directed the guns, holding fire until the ships were in range and then wrecking the assault in a lopsided victory. The pass itself was a vital artery for blockade-running that carried Confederate cotton out and medicines and arms back in.

Uvalde, TX

Established on the Leona River in 1849 and named for a lieutenant killed at Resaca de la Palma in the Mexican War, Fort Inge guarded the southern Overland Mail route against raids in the years before the Civil War. Robert E. Lee visited in 1856, when the post was a tidy cluster of a dozen simple buildings. Confederate troops held it during the war, and federal soldiers returned in 1866 before it was abandoned in 1869.

Pottsboro, TX

William G. Cooke established Fort Johnson in 1840 to help guard the Republic of Texas's Military Road running from the Red River to Austin. Named for Colonel Francis W. Johnson, who had commanded Texas forces at the 1835 capture of San Antonio, it became the rendezvous point for the 1843 Snively Expedition. The surrounding settlement was known as Georgetown.

D'Hanis, TX

Established by the U.S. Army on July 7, 1849, Fort Lincoln was one link in a chain of posts strung from the Rio Grande to the Red River to guard the advancing line of settlement. It honored Captain George Lincoln, killed at the Battle of Buena Vista during the Mexican-American War in 1847. As settlers pushed farther west, the frontier moved past it, and the fort was abandoned in 1852.

Fredericksburg, TX

The U.S. Army established Fort Martin Scott in December 1848 to shield travelers and settlers on the Texas frontier from Indian attack, naming it for Major Martin Scott, killed the year before at the Battle of Molino del Rey in the Mexican-American War. Its garrison saw many skirmishes before the post was occupied only intermittently after 1852. Confederate forces held the site during the Civil War, and it was permanently abandoned in 1866.

Menard, TX

The U.S. War Department established Fort McKavett in 1852 to shield frontier settlers from raids, naming it for Captain Henry McKavett, who had fallen at the Battle of Monterrey in the Mexican-American War. Federal troops abandoned it in 1859, reoccupied it after the Civil War in 1868, and finally closed it in 1883 as settlement and the railroads pushed the frontier westward. Its life span traces the arc of the U.S. Army's presence on the West Texas frontier.

Dinero, TX

Fort Merrill rose on the Nueces frontier in February 1850, established by Captain S. M. Plummer of the First U.S. Infantry to shield settlers pressing into South Texas. It honored Captain Hamilton W. Merrill, a dragoon decorated for gallantry in the recent Mexican War. The post proved short-lived, permanently abandoned by the end of 1855 as the line of settlement moved on.

Port Isabel, TX

A Mexican ranching village once stood on this point, settled in the 1700s and abandoned before the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846. That March, General Zachary Taylor's forces occupied the site and built a supply depot to receive shipments from New Orleans, a six-sided earthwork named Fort Polk for the president. The fort was abandoned in 1850, but the settlement it drew grew into Port Isabel, with traces of the earthworks visible into the 1920s.

Itasca, TX

Established about 1846, Fort Smith was one of a chain of posts running from the Colorado to the Red River, built to shield settlers on the advancing Texas frontier. Named for Major Thomas I. Smith, it guarded a line of settlement pressing into contested Indian country. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936 to record the vanished post.

Ft. Stockton, TX

Founded on the Comanche Trail in 1859, Fort Stockton guarded the San Antonio-San Diego mail route and was named for Commodore Robert Field Stockton, who had helped seize California for the United States. Federal troops abandoned it during the Civil War and reoccupied it in 1867 as the army worked to curb Comanche raids and protect westward travel. The post was permanently abandoned in 1886 as the frontier it policed faded away.

Sonora, TX

Fort Terrett was established by the U.S. Army in February 1852 to shield frontier settlers, and it carried the name of Lieutenant John C. Terrett, killed at Monterrey in 1846. Posts like it formed a thin line of defense across the Texas frontier before being abandoned as settlement pushed westward, and Terrett was left behind after barely two years, in 1854. Its brief life mirrors the restless army calculus of a fast-changing frontier.

New York, NY

During the American Revolution, the rocky heights of northern Manhattan were fortified to help hold the Hudson against the British advance. Fort Tryon stood as an advanced outwork guarding the approaches to the larger Fort Washington, and when Hessian regiments stormed the hilltop, its outnumbered defenders put up a determined fight before the position was overwhelmed. Among them was Margaret Corbin, who took her fallen husband's place at the cannon and kept firing until she herself was gravely wounded.

Navasota, TX

Ira M. Freeman built this two-story pine inn in 1856 as a way station and hotel for passengers on the several stage lines threading through Navasota. Travelers of every sort lodged here — among them Sam Houston — and during the Civil War it hosted officers and important visitors, while Freeman's barns sheltered the coaches and teams.

Hempstead vicinity, TX

Jared E. Groce, one of Stephen F. Austin's earliest and wealthiest colonists, opened this ferry across the Brazos in 1822, giving travelers a crossing on a river that has since wandered from its old bed. In the spring of 1836, as Santa Anna's army pressed east, Sam Houston's Texas Army encamped near here from late March into April, resting and drilling before the campaign that ended at San Jacinto. The State of Texas marked the spot in its 1936 centennial.

Longview, TX

When the U.S. Army needed hospital beds for a nation at war, it threw up 220 buildings on 156 acres here and activated Harmon General Hospital in November 1942, naming it for career medical officer Colonel Daniel W. Harmon. Nearly a self-contained town, it had a chapel, theater, bank, and post office, and by 1945 was drawing on German prisoners of war held at nearby Camp Fannin for labor. It closed in December 1945 after treating some 25,000 wartime patients; LeTourneau College now occupies the grounds.

San Marcos, TX

In 1847, San Marcos settlers raised a rough log house of elm, cedar, and cypress on this spot — dirt floor, split-log benches, and a single room asked to be everything at once. It served as the young county's courthouse after Hays County was organized in 1848, hosted the first Presbyterian and Baptist congregations, sat beside a stagecoach stop, and later became a drill headquarters for Confederate recruits. Fallen into disuse, it burned in 1874.

Rockport, TX

As World War I demanded ships, the Heldenfels Shipyard rose on nearly thirteen acres of Rockport waterfront in October 1917 to build four 281-foot wooden cargo vessels for the military. At its peak more than 900 men worked here, and the "Baychester" and "Zuniga" slid into the water in 1919. When the war ended and a hurricane battered the yard, the last two hulls were finished as barges in 1920, closing out the contract.

Jefferson, TX

Captain George T. Todd came to the Republic of Texas as a boy and grew into one of Marion County's most consequential men. He fought with the celebrated Hood's Texas Brigade in the Civil War, famously taking command at Chickamauga after General Hood was wounded, then rode with Lane's Partisan Rangers in the war's final year. In peacetime he served in the legislature and as a UT regent, but he is best remembered as the district attorney who spent seven years prosecuting the sensational 'Diamond Bessie' murder case.

Daingerfield, TX

This factory built the machinery that kept Texas agriculture running: gin saws to strip seed from cotton and grist mills to grind corn into meal. When the Civil War cut off imports, such local works became vital, letting Texas process the cotton that served as the "money of the Confederacy"—traded across the Mexican border for ammunition, medicine, and other goods. The war spurred a whole network of Texas plants making wagons, guns, powder, shoes, and cloth.

Ranger, TX

By 1917 area farmers and ranchers were reeling from drought and boll weevils when Texas and Pacific Coal Company manager William Knox Gordon bet that oil lay far deeper than earlier dry holes had reached. Contractor Warren Wagner drilled here on J. H. McCleskey's farm, and on October 17, 1917, at 3,432 feet the well roared in at an estimated 1,600 barrels a day. It ignited the wild, prolific Ranger boom, whose oil helped relieve wartime shortages and let the Allies, as the saying went, 'float to victory on a wave of oil.'

Newark, IL

Near this site stood Kendall County's first store, built by George Hollenback, until it was burned in May 1832 during the Black Hawk War. That conflict — sparked when Sauk leader Black Hawk led followers back across the Mississippi to reclaim ceded homelands — swept panic and violence across northern Illinois, driving scattered settlers to flee or fort up.

Corpus Christi, TX

Henry L. Kinney built a fort-like trading post here, enclosed by a stockade around his home, store, and quarters for armed men, and Corpus Christi grew up around it. Much of his trade was with Indians and smuggling for Mexican Federalists, but business boomed when General Zachary Taylor's army camped nearby before marching to the Rio Grande in 1846. Kinney served as Taylor's quartermaster in the Mexican-American War, won repeated election to the legislature, and later ruined himself on a failed fair and a doomed Nicaragua scheme before dying in Matamoros.

Texas City, TX

Around 1821 the privateer and War of 1812 veteran James Campbell — a lieutenant and close friend of the buccaneer Jean Lafitte at Galveston — put the sea behind him to settle here as a rancher. He had earlier taken a bride, Mary Sabinal, in Karankawa ceremony, and the couple raised their community on this coastal ground. The settlement endured until a hurricane destroyed it a second time in 1915, and the Campbells lie with other early Texans in the nearby cemetery.

Fairfield, TX

A Fairfield lawyer, judge, and newspaper founder, John Gregg helped lead Texas out of the Union at the 1861 Secession Convention and served in the Confederate Congress before raising a Texas infantry regiment. As a general he fought near Vicksburg and at Chickamauga and commanded the famed Texas Brigade at the Battle of the Wilderness, until he was killed near Richmond in October 1864. His widow braved the battle lines by wagon to bring his body home.

Linwood, TX

Built about 1830 on land tied to some of the earliest Anglo families in Texas, Linwood stood at the crossroads of the region's founding dramas. Its builder, Joseph Durst, had risen to alcalde of Nacogdoches by 1826, and in 1832 the Battle of Nacogdoches ended on this ground with the surrender of Colonel Piedras's Mexican force to a small band of Texans. The home later belonged to George Whitfield Terrell, a diplomat of the Republic of Texas, and was the birthplace of congressman George B. Terrell.

Houston, TX

Texas statesman Francis Richard Lubbock ran a 1,300-acre ranch near here from 1846 to 1861, building large cattle herds that grazed between the Brazos and Trinity and were shipped by steamer from Sims Bayou to New Orleans. The ranch even hosted forty army camels in 1858 before they were driven west for the War Department's desert-transport experiment. Lubbock went on to serve as Texas' Confederate governor during the Civil War and later as an aide to Jefferson Davis, with whom he was captured in 1865.

Canadian, TX

In September 1874, during the U.S. Army's Red River campaign against the Southern Plains tribes, Captain Wyllys Lyman's supply wagon train was besieged in the Texas Panhandle. Fighting from a wagon corral, Lyman and 95 soldiers held off some 400 Comanche and Kiowa warriors for five days in what became the longest Indian battle in Panhandle history. A scout slipped away to Camp Supply, and cavalry rode 80 miles through a rainstorm to break the siege.

Wilson, TX

On December 4, 1874, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie and two companies of the U.S. 4th Cavalry were caught by a brutal snowstorm at this spot on the Llano Estacado. With no wood, water, or grass, the troopers spent what they called the most miserable night of their Southwestern service, and several horses froze to death. Mackenzie was scouting for scattered bands during the closing weeks of the 1874 campaign to force the Southern Plains tribes onto reservations.

Marfa, TX

During World War II, the Army Air Forces blanketed Texas with training fields, and in 1942 chose Marfa for an advanced multi-engine flying school. Despite early shortages, the field grew to four hangars and five runways, training pilots—including Chinese allied cadets from 1944—and hosting a Women's Army Corps unit and African American support troops. Deactivated in September 1945, the base's closure dealt a heavy blow to the town, leaving only foundations and runways behind.

Independence, TX

On this spot in August 1861, Captain J.B. Robertson raised Company I of the Fifth Texas Infantry, known as "The Texas Aides," for what became Hood's Texas Brigade. The unit fought in many of the Civil War's fiercest eastern battles — Gaines' Mill, Second Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness — and Robertson rose to brigadier general, succeeding Hood in command. When the brigade surrendered at Appomattox in 1865, only about twelve percent of its enlistees remained.

Newton, TX

In the settlement era of the early 1800s, this Sabine River crossing was one of only four main gateways for pioneers entering Texas from Louisiana, letting families bring their stock and household goods across the border. Known first as Hickman's Ferry and later for Dr. Timothy Burr — a second cousin of Vice President Aaron Burr — it also anchored "the Old Beef Trail," over which thousands of cattle were driven to Alexandria for shipment to New Orleans. By the Civil War the site was strategic enough that Confederates dug breastworks and cleared timber to guard against Federal invasion.

Comanche vicinity, TX

W. A. Gill, son of a San Jacinto veteran, settled this Comanche County land in 1874 after fighting in the Civil War and serving as a captain in the Texas Rangers. His sons E. V. and Fleet lived here for many years on the family farm. In 1964 the remains in the family plot were reinterred a mile north at Buffalo Cemetery.

Houston, TX

Houston Academy opened in 1856 and quickly felt the Civil War's pull, losing most of its young men to the Confederate army and serving as a military hospital in 1864–65. In 1867 the building held the lying-in-state of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, the Texas Republic secretary of war and career soldier killed at Shiloh. The school was later reborn as Clopper Institute and, within Houston's public system, as Central High and Sam Houston High School.

Midland, TX

Built in 1931 as Sloan Field, this West Texas airfield became the Midland Army Flying School in 1942 and grew into what was called the largest bombardier training center in the world. One of more than 25 World War II airfields in Texas, its cadets logged over 861,000 flying hours in Beech AT-11 trainers and released more than 1.2 million practice bombs. The last class graduated in January 1945, and after the war the site transitioned to commercial aviation.