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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
The picturesque remains of Fort Davis, more extensive
and impressive than those of any other southwestern fort, are a vivid
modern reminder of a colorful chapter in western history. They also
stand as a tribute to the courage of frontier soldiers, black and white,
and their tenacious Indian opponents. A key post in the western Texas
defensive system, Fort Davis was one of the most active in the West
during the Indian wars, especially the 1879-80 campaign against the
Apache Victorio. As Fort Bowie, Ariz., spearheaded the campaign against
the Chiricahua Apaches, so did Fort Davis against the Warm Springs and
Mescaleros. Forts Bowie and Davis also both protected transcontinental
emigrant, freight, and stage routes.
The mounting tide of westward travel in the 1850's,
generated by the California gold rush and the newfound interest of
settlers in the vast territory the United States acquired from Mexico in
the Mexican War (1846-48) and the Gadsden Purchase (1853), swelled
traffic over the transcontinental trails. To avoid the winter snows and
mountains of the central routes to the goldfields or to seek their
fortune in the newly acquired Southwest, thousands of gold seekers and
emigrants pushed along the southern route. A vital segment was the San
Antonio-El Paso Road, opened in 1849, which also carried a large volume
of traffic between the two cities and Santa Fe, N. Mex., and Chihuahua,
Mexico.
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Fort Davis about 1885.
(National Archives) |
The road presented rich opportunities for plunder to
Kiowa, Comanche, and Mescalero Apache raiders. Intersecting it were the
trails of marauding Indians who had long swept down from the north and
devastated the isolated villages and haciendas of northern Mexico. West
of the Davis Mountains, foraying Mescaleros of New Mexico crossed the
road. East of the mountains, the Great Comanche War Trail bisected its
lower branch at Comanche Springs.
Inevitably the Indians paused to assail travelers on
the San Antonio-El Paso Road. As depredations mounted, a finger of
military outposts pointed west into the trans-Pecos region. Forts
Hudson, Lancaster, Stockton, Davis, Quitman, and Bliss extended military
protection from the outer ring of defensive posts all the way to El
Paso.
Of these, Fort Davis was the largest and most
important. Lt. Col. Washington Seawell and 8th Infantry troops from Fort
Ringgold, Tex., founded it in 1854 near a site known as Painted Comanche
Camp. At the eastern edge of the Davis Mountains north of the Big Bend
of the Rio Grande, the new fort was situated in a small box canyon,
lined by low basaltic ridges, just south of Limpia Canyon. Strategically
located in relation to emigrant and Indian trails and on the San
Antonio-El Paso Road, it also afforded an adequate water supply,
mandatory in the arid region, from nearby Limpia Creek; a good timber
supply, for fuel and construction, in the Davis Mountains; and a
salubrious climate. Seawell never built the more permanent post he
envisioned to the east at the mouth of the canyon. Instead, in time a
motley collection of tent-like structures and thatch-roofed buildings of
log, picket, frame, and stone straggled along the length of the
canyon.
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Lt. Col. Wesley Merritt and his
black 9th Cavalry troops reactivated Fort Davis in 1867. He later won
distinction during the northern Plains campaigns. (photo Matthew B.
Brady, National Archives) |
In the pre-Civil War years the garrison patrolled
regularly, guarded mail relay stations, escorted mail and freight
trains, and fought occasional skirmishes with the Kiowas, Comanches, and
Apaches. The troops made little progress, however, in pacifying the
Indians in the region. Tempting targets to the warriors were the
mail-carrying stagecoaches that operated on a local and interregional
basis in the 1854-61 period through Fort Davis over the San Antonio-El
Paso Road and offered connections with St. Louis, Santa Fe, and
California: the George H. Giddings (1854-57) and James Birch (1857-61)
lines, and the Butterfield Overland Mail (1859-61).
One of the few diversions of the fort's troops, whose
duties were alternately grueling and boring, was watching the camels of
the Army's experimental corps that occasionally lumbered in. Edward F.
Beale's herd of 25 en route in 1857 from the Camp Verde camel base to
Fort Tejon, Calif., passed by. In 1859 and 1860 Texas military
authorities utilized some of the Camp Verde animals in an attempt to
blaze a shorter route from San Antonio and the Pecos to Fort Davis and
to compare their efficiency with mules. Although the camels proved
superior, the camel project ultimately came to naught.
The Union evacuated its forts in western Texas in
1861, when Texas joined the Confederacy. The Confederates took over Fort
Davis in 1861-62, but withdrew upon their failure to conquer New Mexico
and the approach of General Carleton's California Volunteers. Meantime
the men in grey had enjoyed no immunity from the Apaches, who wiped out
a detachment of 14 of them deep in the Big Bend country. Wrecked by
Apaches, Fort Davis lay deserted for 5 years.
Federal soldiers, under Lt. Col. Wesley Merritt, did
not return until the summer of 1867, but when they did their color had
changed. Between then and 1885, elements of all the Army's post-Civil
War black regiments, composed largely of ex-slaves and commanded by
white officers, were stationed at the fort at one time or another along
with various white regiments. The black units were the 9th and 10th
Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry, all of which served with notable
distinction not only at Fort Davis but throughout the West during the
Indian wars.
Rather than trying to rebuild the old fort, which had
been vulnerable to Apache attacks from closeby ridges, Merritt fulfilled
Seawell's dream by beginning the erection of a new fort at the mouth of
the canyon. Of more substantial stone and adobe, it was not completed
until the 1880's. Meantime Fort Davis had resumed its role of protecting
western Texas. Highlighting the achievements of the fort's black troops,
as well as those from other Texas forts, was participation in the
Victorio campaign (1879-80). As many as 1,000 troops, a large number of
them black, at various times tramped 135,000 miles in the arduous but
frustrating pursuit of Victorio's tiny group of some 100 Warm Springs
and Mescalero Apaches.
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Barracks at Fort Davis. Top, in
1875; center, 2 years before the National Park Service began
restoration; and bottom, following restoration in 1965-66. (National
Archives (top), National Park Service (middle and
bottom)) |
In the spring of 1879 Victorio, who for 2 years had
resisted the efforts of Indian agents to move his band to the San Carlos
Reservation, Ariz., recruited some of the discontented Mescaleros at the
Fort Stanton Reservation, N. Mex., who had been raiding in Texas
themselves. The new allies, outrunning pursuing troops, fled into
Mexico. For 2 years, employing clever guerrilla tactics, they wreaked
havoc on both sides of the Rio Grande and struck repeatedly in New
Mexico, western Texas, and Chihuahua (Mexico). When cornered, they
skirmished with soldiers, Texas Rangers, and citizens' posses, but
always managed to escape. In September 1879 and January 1880 Victorio
returned to New Mexico. On the latter occasion, New Mexico and Texas
troops attempted to disarm the Mescaleros at Fort Stanton Reservation
before Victorio could recruit them. But 50 of them escaped and joined
Victorio, who returned to Mexico.
Knowing that Victorio would appear again but
preferring to stop him in Texas rather than sending troops to New
Mexico, Col. Benjamin H. Grierson in the summer of 1880 established the
headquarters of his black 10th Cavalry at Fort Davis; dispersed troops
all along the arid country from there to El Paso; sharpened patrol
actions; set up subposts along the Rio Grande at Viejo Pass, Eagle
Springs, and Fort Quitman; and carefully watched the waterholes Victorio
would need to rely on to cross the inhospitable country.
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Col. Benjamin H. Grierson,
commander of the black 10th Cavalry. Fort Davis was a key base in his
vigorous 1879-80 campaign against the Warm Springs Apache Victorio.
(Kansas Historical Society) |
Finally, in the vicinity of present Van Horn, Tex.,
Grierson and his men defeated Victorio in two battles in July and August
and forced him back into Mexico. Two months later Mexican soldiers
killed him. A remnant of his band, under the aged Warm Springs leader
Nana, escaped to the Sierra Madre, where they later joined forces with
another wily Apache leader, Geronimo. But Victorio's death ended the era
of Indian warfare in Texas.
In the 1880's large numbers of cattlemen settled in
the area of the fort. The routine was punctuated only by occasional
tours of escort duty for railroad builders, bandit-chasing expeditions,
and border-patrol actions. The routes of the Texas Pacific and Southern
Pacific Railroads, which pushed through western Texas in the 1880's,
bypassed the fort. The last troops left in 1891.
In 1963 Fort Davis came into the National Park
System. A program was immediately launched to save the remaining
buildings, begin restoring some of them, and interpret the story of the
fort to the public. Of the more than 50 adobe and stone buildings that
constituted the second Fort Davis at the time of its abandonment,
visitors today may inspect 16 officers' residences, two sets of
barracks, warehouses, a magazine, the hospital, and other structures.
Stone foundations mark the sites of other buildings. Archeologists have
recently uncovered the foundations of many structures of the first fort
(1854-61), in the canyon west of the second. The site of the Butterfield
stage station, a half mile northeast of the first fort, has also been
identified. The National Park Service presents a unique sound program of
special interest to the visitor. He may hear a bugle, echoing from the
nearby hills, peal out the various orders of the day. Another
interesting sound presentation is a formal retreat ceremony.
NHL Designation: 12/19/60
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitea23.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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