Fort Davis

Duane's take

The way this story's been handed down, it comes straight off the official marker: here's my telling of it. Now settle in, because this one reaches back to a time when West Texas was about as wild and wide-open as the sky above it. October 1854.

Lieutenant Colonel Washington Seawell rides into the Davis Mountains with six companies of the Eighth U.S. Infantry, and right then and there, he plants the flag on what will become Fort Davis. The mission was plain and urgent: protect the travelers pushing through on the San Antonio-El Paso Road.

That road was a lifeline, and it needed guarding. So they built. They stayed.

They watched over that long stretch of hardscrabble country. The fort was named in honor of Jefferson Davis (the Secretary of War at the time), and that name stuck to the land like caliche to a boot heel. But then came April 1861, and the federal troops abandoned the post.

Just like that, Fort Davis went quiet. The soldiers gone, the flagpole bare. For six long years, the place sat empty; until 1867, when troops returned and reoccupied it.

From that point on, the soldiers stationed at Fort Davis worked to bring about the peaceful settlement and development of the surrounding region. Year by year, the country around those mountains began to take shape, to breathe, to grow. And then, in 1891, Fort Davis was deactivated.

Nearly four decades of service, begun by six companies on a dusty road to El Paso, finally laid to rest. But the land remembers. Out here in Jeff Davis County, the mountains still carry that name, and the story still rides the wind.

What the marker says

Established by Lieut. Col. Washington Seawell with six companies of the Eighth U.S. Infantry in October 1854 for protecting travelers on the San Antonio-El Paso Road. Named in honor of the then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, it was abandoned by federal troops in April 1861, reoccupied in 1867. Troops from the post helped to bring about the peaceful settlement and development of the region. Fort Davis was deactivated in 1891.