DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Camp Colorado, C.S.A., out in Coleman County. Now, there's a certain kind of irony that only Texas can produce — and Camp Colorado, C.S.A. is soaked in it. This place began its war story not with a battle cry, but with a surrender.
It was a U.S. outpost, and when the Civil War came calling, it was surrendered over. Just like that. The stars and stripes came down, and a whole new chapter began.
What happened next is the part worth leaning in for. Camp Colorado didn't sit idle. It became a link in the frontier defense line that stretched all the way from the Red River down to the Rio Grande — a chain of posts holding the edge of a civilization that was itself being torn apart a thousand miles to the east.
Camp Colorado was a hinge point in that line, and somebody had to hold it. In 1861, it became the headquarters for the First Texas Mounted Rifles. Then in 1863, the Texas Frontier Regiment took that role.
Troops and Rangers, serving under both state and Confederate authority, manned this place from those early war days straight through to the end. Their orders weren't to march toward some grand Eastern battlefield. Their job was here — on the Texas frontier — and it was no small thing.
They patrolled. They scouted. They worked to curb Indian raids on settlements that had no other shield.
And when the war's own chaos produced draft evaders and deserters drifting into the backcountry, these men were tasked with rounding them up too. It was duty that rarely made the history books, but valuable duty all the same — the marker says so plainly. And the life these men lived at Camp Colorado?
Difficult doesn't quite cover it. The peril of Indian attack was constant — not a rumor, not an occasional alarm, but a steady, grinding reality. Add to that a shortage of food.
A shortage of ammunition. A shortage of supplies. A shortage of horses.
These men were asked to hold a frontier line with empty hands and thin rations, and they held it anyway. Camp Colorado sits twelve miles northeast of where that marker stands. What's left is memory and stone and the long sweep of Coleman County land that looks about the same today as it did then.
The State of Texas erected this marker in 1963 as a memorial to the Texans who served the Confederacy — and specifically to the ones who served it out here, on the edge of everything, where the war they were fighting was quieter than Gettysburg but no less relentless. Some men charge cannons. Some men patrol a cold river in the dark, short on bullets and shorter on supper, watching for shadows that might be riders.
Camp Colorado remembers the second kind.
What the marker says
Surrendered as U.S. outpost beginning Civil War. Became part frontier defense line from Red River to Rio Grande. Headquarters first Texas Mounted Rifles 1861 and Texas Frontier Regiment 1863. Manned by troops and Rangers in state and C.S.A. service to war's end. Valuable duty performed while patrolling and scouting to curb Indian raids and in rounding up draft evaders, deserters. Camp life difficult with constant peril of Indian attack, shortage food, ammunition, supplies and horses. Located 12 miles northeast. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy. Erected by the State of Texas 1963