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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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BENICIA BARRACKS AND ARSENAL
California
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Location: Solano County, eastern edge of
Benicia.
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Until inactivated in 1963 the modern Army
installation known as Benicia Arsenal included what were once two
separate posts, Benicia Barracks (1849-1908) and Benicia Arsenal
(1851-1963). The barracks, established at the western end of Suisun Bay
as an infantry base in 1849, was one of the first military posts in
California. Two years later, to support troops scattered along the
Pacific coast conducting exploration and combating Indians, the Army
founded adjacent to the barracks an ordnance supply depot, the first in
the Far West, for the Pacific Division. The next year, 1852, the depot
was officially designated an arsenal. It soon had a quartermaster depot
associated with it. The barracks remained a garrisoned infantry post
until 1898, when its troops departed for duty in the Philippines. In
1908 the arsenal absorbed it.
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Arsenal ("Clocktower") Building
(1859), Benicia Arsenal, as it appears today. (photo Charles W.
Snell, National Park Service) |
Throughout its existence the barracks-arsenal was a
primary staging area and logistical support center for the Western
United States and the Pacific areain the Indian wars, Civil War,
Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean conflict. For
slightly more than 3 years during two separate periods in the 1850's
Benicia was the headquarters of the Army's Department of the Pacific,
before and after that time located at the Presidio of San Francisco.
William T. Sherman, George Crook, and Ulysses S. Grant served at the
arsenal as young lieutenants; Col. James W. Benet, father of the poets
William Rose and Stephen Vincent, was commanding officer. And the Army's
camel experiment in California ended at the arsenal, where the camels
were assembled in 1863 and sold at public auction the next year.
The old barracks and arsenal are both registered
State historical landmarks. In 1965, or 2 years after the Army
inactivated the arsenal, it conveyed the installation to the city of
Benicia. The city has leased it to a corporation, which has modified
some of the buildings. All of them are open to exterior inspection, but
may not be entered except by permission. To facilitate a walking tour,
the corporation has published a brochure on the history of the
buildings. The barracks and arsenal sites are situated about one-quarter
mile apart. Extant on 252 acres of the 2,200 acres that comprised the
military reservation are 21 one- and two-story structures, four of frame
and 17 of brick and sandstone, that were constructed between 1854 and
1884. One of these, the hospital, believed to be the first military
hospital on the Pacific coast, in which Indian war casualties were
treated, is at the barracks; and the remainder at the arsenal. Three
other buildings date from 1900, 1909, and 1911.
Practically all the structures were used for modern
arsenal purposes. They are all in excellent condition, have been little
altered, and suffer only from minor intrusions. As a whole they provide
an outstanding example of military architecture, especially of arsenals,
in the last half of the 19th century. Buildings of historical interest,
besides the hospital, include the arsenal; headquarters building; the
commanding officer's quarters; various shops and warehouses, among them
those that housed the camels in 1863-64; various officers' quarters;
barracks; powder magazines; and guard house. Burials in the post
cemetery date from the 1850's.
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Hospital building, the only
surviving structure from Benicia Barracks. (photo Charles W. Snell,
National Park Service) |
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FORT BIDWELL
California
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Location: Modoc County, town of Fort
Bidwell.
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Tucked into the extreme northeastern corner of
California, Fort Bidwell (1865-93) was founded by Volunteer troops to
protect settlers and emigrants from the Indians of northern California,
southern Oregon, and western Nevada. In the 1890's the log post spread
slightly to the south of its original location, and a town grew up
around it. Its garrison fought with Gen. George Crook at the nearby
Battle of Infernal Caverns in September 1867, during his 1866-68 Snake
campaign, and in the wars against the Modocs (1872-73), Nez Perces
(1877), and Bannocks (1878). The Indian Bureau succeeded the Army at the
post and utilized it for a boarding school, which was operated until
1930. In that year the original two-story barracks, later a school
dormitory, was razed.
All that remains, in varying states of preservation,
are the stable; a school, now a private residence; a few other
buildings; a graveyard; and the parade ground. The site, headquarters of
the Fort Bidwell Indian Reservation and a registered State historical
landmark, is marked by a monument.
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FORT BRAGG
California
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Location: Mendocino County, Main Street, town of
Fort Bragg.
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The major mission of the small garrison assigned to
this coastal fort, established in 1857 on the Mendocino Indian
Reservation, was control of the reservation. When the post was but a
year old, its troops took part in the campaign in eastern Washington. At
the beginning of the Civil War, California Volunteers replaced the
Regulars and in 1864, by which time most of the Indians had departed
from the reservation, abandoned it. Three years later the Government
opened the lands to settlement, and the town of Fort Bragg grew up
around the site.
A State marker commemorating the fort, a registered
State historical landmark, is located near the hospital site, at 321
Main Street. Main Street bisects the site of the parade ground, bounded
on the north by Laurel Street between Franklin and McPherson and on the
south at a point about 100 feet south of Redwood Street.
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FORT HUMBOLDT
California
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Location: Humboldt County, just off U.S. 101,
southern edge of Eureka.
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This fort, active in the years 1853-67 and located on
a bluff over looking Humboldt Bay and the Pacific, was the Army
headquarters and logistics base for northern California and one of the
few posts in the area. Lt. George Crook arrived with the first
detachment, and Capt. Ulysses S. Grant served at the post during the
years 1853-54. The garrison served in the second Rogue River War
(1855-56), in Oregon.
Nothing remains of Fort Humboldt on the actual fort
site. The only extant structure of any sort is the remodeled hospital,
which has been shifted slightly from its original location. State
offices now occupy it. Markers indicate officers' row. A bronze tablet
on a boulder, placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, marks
the site. It is a registered State historical landmark and State
historical monument.
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FORT JONES
California
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Location: Siskiyou County, East Side Road, about
one-half mile south of the town of Fort Jones.
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Fort Jones (1852-58), a small post in the Scott River
Valley of north-central California, was founded to protect gold miners
from the Indians. Two young officers who served there were Lt. George
Crook and Capt. Ulysses S. Grant. The troops participated in the 1858
campaign in eastern Washington; the first (1853) and second (1855-56)
Rogue River Wars, in Oregon; and the 1857 campaign against the Pit River
Indians, in the northeastern part of California.
All traces of the post, originally of log and later
of frame, have disappeared. A flagpole and commemorative marker, erected
by Siskiyou County, indicate the site, a registered State historical
landmark.
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FORT TEJON
California
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Location: Kern County, on I-5 (Calif. 99), about
38 miles south of Bakersfield.
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Near Tejon Pass along one of the routes running north
from Los Angeles to the northern goldfields. Fort Tejon (1854-64)
protected travelers and settlers; was a station on the Butterfield
Overland Mail (1858-59); patrolled the area for cattle rustlers and
horse thieves; served as a social and political center for a large area
in central California; and controlled the Indians living on the Tejon
(Sebastian) Indian Reservation. The reservation, founded in 1853 about
20 miles to the north by Edward F. Beale, Superintendent of Indian
Affairs for California and Nevada (1852-56), was a governmental
experiment he conceived in Indian management. It was the first of a
series of small but well-defined reservations where Indians were to be
concentrated and taught farming and trades so they could become
self-sufficient. Beale's successors established a few other
reservations, but mismanagement weakened practically all of them. The
Fort Tejon Reservation was disbanded in 1863.
Meantime Fort Tejon had entered a new era in 1857
when Beale, while surveying for the Army a proposed wagon road across
the Southwest, brought a 25-camel caravan from Camp Verde, Tex., to the
scene of his earlier reservation experiment. The camels were later also
quartered at Drum Barracks (Camp Drum), at present Wilmington, Calif.,
and other installations in southern California. They transported
supplies between Fort Tejon and Drum Barracks, as well as between other
posts. The outbreak of the Civil War and other factors ended the
experiment. In 1861 the Army inactivated Fort Tejon, the camels
temporarily went to other posts, and in 1863 were transported to Benicia
Arsenal, Calif., and sold there the next year at public auction.
The year before, Volunteers from Camp Independence,
Calif., had regarrisoned Fort Tejon to control 1,000 Indians they had
removed from the Owens River Valley. By the middle of 1864, dissatisfied
with conditions, most of the latter had returned to the valley.
Evacuated that same year by the Army, Fort Tejon became part of the
Rancho Castac and 2 years later part of Rancho El Tejon, owned by Beale,
who used its buildings as residences and stables.
Fort Tejon State Historical Park is also a registered
State historical landmark. It features three restored adobe buildings: a
barracks, an officers' quarters, and a building that probably was an
orderly's residence. Adobe ruins mark the sites of other buildings. A
visitor center displays exhibits.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitec2.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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