Fort McKavett and Hill Country Frontier

Although it was falling into ruin by the mid-1800s, the abandoned Spanish presidio on the upper San Saba River occupied a prominent place in the strategies of American soldiers planning the defense of the Anglo-Texan frontier.

Albert Sidney Johnston, secretary of war of the Republic of Texas, had proposed placing a garrison at the "old Spanish fort" as part of his plan for a line of military posts running from the Red River to the Nueces. Texas never implemented Johnston's plan, but officers of the United States Army would later look favorably on the presidio's central location on the Edwards Plateau.

The end of the United States' war with Mexico in 1848 brought two issues of military strategy to convergence in the Hill Country. The first was the protection of the frontier settlements from raids by Comanche and Kiowa Indians. The second was the protection of westering travelers headed for the gold fields of California by way of El Paso.

The discovery of gold in California set off a flurry of exploration for transcontinental travel routes. Overland passage from St. Louis required crossing the uninhabited Great Plains—or Great American Desert, as the region was denominated on maps of the time—with their twin dangers of Indian attack and winter blizzards. The sea route, around the southern tip of South America, looked on paper to be even more time-consuming than it was in practice, and was expensive in any event.

Travel from New Orleans to Austin or San Antonio seemed easy enough. Passage from there, through El Paso to southern California, would be free of snow. The only thing lacking was development of a route that was safe from hostile Indians.

The veteran ranger and surveyor Jack Hays conducted an ill-fated exploration west from San Antonio in 1848 that was followed the next year by the more successful venture of Hays' fellow ranger, John S. "Rip" Ford, and U.S. Indian agent Robert Neighbors. Their effort began north of Austin and proceeded west, following the Concho River from its confluence with the Colorado, into the Trans-Pecos region, then west to El Paso. The Ford-Neighbors expedition returned by way of the Concho, San Saba, and Llano rivers, then through Fredericksburg and into San Antonio.

The U.S. Army was following the same train of thought, and almost the same schedule, as the civilian explorers. Departing San Antonio, lieutenants W.H.C. Whiting and William F. Smith traveled through Fredericksburg to the San Saba River, then west through the Trans-Pecos. When they returned, Whiting recommended locating a garrison of mounted troops at "old Fort San Saba." In 1851, Brevet Major General Persifor Smith, commanding U.S. Army forces in Texas, ordered the construction of a post on the San Saba "at the headsprings of that river near the El Paso road."

Selection of an 8th Infantry headquarters on the San Saba proved unsatisfactory. The regiment arrived at the headwaters in March, 1852, and established camp as ordered. The site was on a small hill near a pond of "permanent" water. Although construction was begun on a lime kiln and bakery, the camp was soon moved two miles downstream when the pond became stagnant.

The new location was at first referred to as the "Camp on the San Saba" or "Post on the San Saba." In October, it was renamed Camp McKavett—and thereafter Fort McKavett—in honor of Captain Henry McKavett of the 8th Infantry, who had served meritoriously in the Mexican War and been killed at Monterrey in 1846.

Five companies of the 8th Infantry initially were assigned to the post, and they set about constructing permanent buildings: five infantrymen's barracks, kitchens used temporarily as officers quarters, a hospital, and a quartermaster's storehouse. These were erected around a square parade ground. Each company was responsible for constructing its own quarters, and those of its officers.

Limestone was quarried nearby for building foundations and walls, and was burned—probably in the kiln at the original location—for mortar. Oak and pecan logs were used for construction of some buildings in the jacal, or picket, style. At first, there was no lumber for floors or doors, nor glass for windows. The required materials were transported from Fredericksburg in later years.

The post was improved substantially through the mid-1850s. The new construction included two-story quarters for the commanding officer and one-story barracks for other officers, adjutant's office, guardhouse, new bakery and kitchens, and laundresses' quarters.

Military operations at and around Fort McKavett reflected the evolution of the army's strategy of frontier defense in the 1850s. On an inspection tour in August, 1853, Colonel W. G. Freeman found Fort McKavett garrisoned by one company of mounted infantry—46 men with only 30 serviceable horses, "wretchedly equipped." The company's request for needed equipment had been properly rejected, said Colonel Freeman, because, "it is now everywhere conceded that the experiment of mounting infantry has not been successful."

The alternative was one of the army's regular mounted service units, either the dragoons or "Mounted Rifles". Colonel Charles May, commanding the 2nd Dragoons, arrived at Fort McKavett in February, 1854. Within two months, departmental commander Persifor Smith ordered into the field all of the "disposable force" of dragoons at forts Chadbourne and McKavett and the Mounted Rifles at Fort Inge. Detachments of 15 men each were directed to patrol a line from the Nueces River to Fort Chadbourne. The contingent at Fort McKavett was assigned the stretch between the Concho River and the Llano. The only reported result of any of these patrols is a battle in the south Texas brush country involving troops from Fort Inge.

The army's strategy and tactics became more aggressive, and more productive, in 1856. The newly arrived 2nd Cavalry garrison at Fort Mason quickly became one of the most active in Texas. For two years, the 2nd's patrols hit parties of Comanche and Lipan wherever they could find them. In February, Sergeant Walter McDonald and a detachment of Company D from Camp Verde pursued Comanche raiders to Kickapoo Creek near the south fork of the Concho River. There, an attack left two soldiers and two Indians dead. The weary cavalrymen reached Fort McKavett after midnight, and there a wounded trooper by the name of John Martin died before dawn. The column left for Camp Verde at first light.

The Penateka Comanche withdrew from the Hill Country in the late 1850s, to either the Clear Fork reservation or the Indian Territory beyond the Red River. Menard County was organized in 1858. With relative peace on the Edwards Plateau, Fort McKavett was ordered abandoned in February, 1859. The post buildings were appropriated by civilian families living in the area.

The Civil War years were a period of turmoil in the region, although this owed as much to the discord and violence between German unionists and Anglo rebels as it did to Indian raids. But by war's end, the Indian troubles were recurring.Fort McKavett was reoccupied by elements of the U.S. Army's 4th Cavalry and 35th Infantry in the spring of 1868. The post apparently was in an advanced state of dilapidation, being described as "one mass of ruins" with only one habitable house, the former commanding officer's quarters. The troops lived in tents while repair and new construction were undertaken.

The spring of 1869 brought dramatic and historic developments to the post with the arrival of the 41st Infantry and its commanding officer, Colonel Ranald Mackenzie. The 41st was one of the army's six regiments—four of infantry, two of cavalry—having black enlisted personnel and white officers. It would be the first such unit to be headquartered at Fort McKavett, and its commander would go on to become one of the foremost Indian fighters of the post-Civil War army.

The 41st Infantry was a well-drilled regiment when it arrived at Fort McKavett, but was new to frontier warfare. Army reorganization resulted in consolidation of the 41st and the 38th—also a black regiment with white officers, but one with substantial western service—to form the new 24th Infantry. Mackenzie imported five civilian carpenters and six stonemasons who, together with the soldiers of the 24th , began substantial improvement and expansion of the post, soon to be considered one of the best in Texas.

Mackenzie launched several expeditions from Fort McKavett during the time he commanded the post. He personally led only one, a joint venture of the 24th Infantry and 9th Cavalry. The 9th was another regiment of black enlisted men and white officers. A company of the 9th usually was stationed at Fort McKavett throughout Mackenzie's tenure, and he had additional companies at his disposal as commander of the army's Subdistrict of the Pecos.

Mackenzie was on leave of absence from the post for most of 1870, leaving Lieutenant Colonel William "Pecos Bill" Shafter in command. It was during this time that diminutive 9th Cavalry Sergeant Emanuel Stance, leading patrol from Fort McKavett, directed his detachment of 10 troopers in two engagements with Indian raiders on successive days. Stance led three charges, two of them in the same action and all of them successful. He had fought in a total of five engagements in two years, a rarity for any soldier of the frontier army at that time, and a record that earned him the Medal of Honor.

In the late 1870s, Mackenzie became the regimental commander of the 4th Cavalry, and McKavett's troops supported expeditions to the Great Plains in 1871, 1872, and 1874 and his and Shafter's forays across the Rio Grande in 1873, 1877, and 1878. In its later years, the fort probably was most valued for its quartermaster stores, as it was the intermediate post on the army's road from San Antonio to the more distant Fort Concho.

As was the case with many Texas frontier posts, Fort McKavett had attached to it a civilian "parasite" settlement. Known locally as "Scabtown," the collection of ramshackle buildings across the river from the post made available those vices that the fort's "sutler" (post trader) was not permitted to provide. In such settings, altercations between soldiers and civilians were bound to occur, and racism was never absent wherever black troops mixed with white settlers. Scabtown probably was no worse than most other such locales, but it was the setting for the notorious murders of three black soldiers by prosperous local rancher John M. "Humpy" Jackson and accomplices, none of whom were ever convicted by civilian authorities.

By 1880, most of the Indian threat on the Edwards Plateau was gone, and Fort McKavett no longer had a military mission. The post was ordered abandoned in 1882, but the large quantity of supplies stored there required extension of the order for a year. The last garrison, a company of the 16th Infantry, was transferred to Fort McIntosh on the Rio Grande.

As they had in 1859, civilians moved in after the army left. The more stable of the Scabtown merchants began occupying the abandoned fort, while the "camp followers" moved on, many probably to Fort Concho and Santa Angela. By the mid-1890s, the civilian community of Fort McKavett was a thriving, though small, center of the sheep and goat-raising industry of the Edwards Plateau.

But time and the railroads passed the town by, and the community's population peaked at about 150 in the late 1920s. Today it still has a post office, but most of the surviving buildings from the military era are located within Fort McKavett State Historic Site, operated by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The site includes more than two dozen structures, many of which are preserved or restored, and is the planned home of the department's Buffalo Soldiers Program archives.