Fort Clark

Duane's take

Now, this one comes straight off the official marker: here's how I tell it. You're driving through Kinney County, and if you let your eyes drift toward Las Moras Creek and the natural springs feeding it, you're looking at the bones of something that mattered for nearly a hundred years. Fort Clark.

Established in June of 1852 as a strategic installation in the U.S. Army's line of forts along the military road stretching all the way from San Antonio to El Paso. That road needed guardin', and the Army decided this particular spot, right near those springs, right near that creek, was a point of primary importance to the defense of frontier settlements and control of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Primary importance. That's not me editorizin'; those are the words they used. Fort Clark earned them.

Now consider the parade of soldiers who passed through this place. Almost every cavalry regiment the Army had. Many infantry regiments.

Texas Rangers set up here. Confederate troops used it during the Civil War. But among all of them, one unit deserves its own breath: the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts.

Assigned to Fort Clark, riding and fighting alongside the black troops of the 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry, they played a decisive role in the Indian campaigns of the 1870s. Decisive. That word does a lot of heavy lifting, and it ought to.

And then there are the names. The generals and colonels who walked this ground read like a roll call of American military history. Colonel Ranald S.

Mackenzie. General Wesley Merritt. General William R.

Shafter. General John L. Bullis.

General Zenas R. Bliss. General Jonathan M.

Wainwright. And (now here's a name that'll make you sit up a little straighter in that car seat) General George S. Patton, Jr.

All of them, at one time or another, serving at Fort Clark. Whatever shaped them, whatever sharpened them, some of that happened here, beside a creek in Kinney County. Fort Clark stayed a horse-cavalry post clear through World War II, which tells you something about the kind of place it was, holdin' on to the old ways even as the world changed around it.

Then, in 1946, it was inactivated. The soldiers left. But the fort didn't disappear.

Those native stone buildings the civilian craftsmen put up in the 1870s, still standing. Still standing well enough that the whole property was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Stone work like that doesn't argue.

It just endures. And so does Fort Clark.

What the marker says

A strategic installation in the U.S. Army's line of forts along the military road stretching from San Antonio to El Paso, Fort Clark was established in June 1852. Located near natural springs and Las Moras Creek, its site was considered a point of primary importance to the defense of frontier settlements and control of the U.S. Mexico border. Many infantry regiments and almost all cavalry regiments were at one time based at Fort Clark, as well as companies of Texas Rangers and Confederate troops during the Civil War. The Army's Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts also were assigned to Fort Clark, and with black troops of the 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th infantry played a decisive role in the Indian campaigns of the 1870s. Prominent military leaders who served here include Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie, Gen. Wesley Merritt, Gen. William R. Shafter, Gen. John L. Bullis, Gen. Zenas R. Bliss, Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright, and Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. Fort Clark remained a horse-cavalry post for the U.S. Army through World War II and finally was inactivated in 1946. The fort property, including many native stone buildings constructed by civilian craftsmen in the 1870s, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. (1994)