Camp Rio Frio, C.S.A.

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Camp Rio Frio, C.S.A.: McMullen County, Texas. Now, that name alone ought to give you a sense of the place.

Cold river country, Civil War era, and everything the frontier could throw at a person. Let me set the scene. While the big armies were grinding each other down somewhere else, scattered local men out here (members of the 29th Brigade, Texas Militia) were holding a different kind of line.

A home guard post. A buffer, the marker calls it, and that word is doing real work. Between the older settlements and the Apaches and bandits pressing in from every direction, these men were what stood in the gap.

Not much, maybe. But something. Now, don't go picturing some grand fort with cannon and flagpoles.

What you had were picket homes. Dirt floors. That's it.

That's where these men slept and ate and kept their watch. And the eating; well, the frontier didn't exactly set a generous table. Prickly pear salad.

Prickly pear fruit. Spanish dagger blooms. Hominy.

Turkey. Quail. Deer meat.

A man out here learned to find his supper in whatever the brush country was willing to surrender. And the clothing? Homespun and linsey, dyed blue with Brazil root, or gold with agarita.

That's the palette of this whole era: rough cloth, root dye, and the particular color of survival. That was the local scene. That was what the home guard was protecting.

The families living in it, wearing it, eating it, enduring it. Now here's the part that gets me: Camp Rio Frio didn't stay Camp Rio Frio. It became Dogtown.

And then Dogtown became Tilden. Three names for one stubborn patch of Texas earth, each one a chapter. The marker puts it plain and I think it earns the words: it proved itself in a rugged era.

That it did.

What the marker says

A Civil War home guard post, acting as buffer to protect older settlements from Apaches and bandits. Scattered local men were members of the 29th Brigade, Texas Militia. Picket homes with dirt floors. Diet of prickly pear salad and fruit, Spanish dagger blooms, hominy, turkey, quail and deer meat. Homespun and linsey clothing dyed blue with Brazil root or gold with agarita. Such was local scene the home guard protected. Camp Rio Frio was later Dogtown, then became Tilden. It proved itself in a rugged era. (1964)