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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, the way only Duane can. Fort Stockton got its start in 1859, planted out there in the Pecos country as if someone looked at a stretch of hard, unforgiving West Texas and said, yes, this is exactly the place. Then the Civil War came along, and the fort was abandoned.
Left to the wind and the silence and whatever else moves through the desert when nobody's watching. But in 1867, Fort Stockton was reestablished, and that is the year this guard house was built. Now, the builders were not about to haul everything across creation if they didn't have to.
The stone for the structure was quarried locally, right out of the ground beneath their boots. The lumber, though, that was another matter entirely. That lumber was hauled from Indianola by oxcart.
Indianola. You think about what that journey looked like, an oxcart loaded with timber creaking across the miles of Texas between the Gulf Coast and the high desert, and you start to appreciate why every plank in that building meant something. When the guard house was finished, it was not exactly a place you wanted to find yourself assigned to, and it was certainly not a place you wanted to find yourself confined in.
The structure held a room fitted with arm and leg irons. It held a dungeon for solitary confinement. And it held quarters for the guards, which, depending on your assignment, may have been only a modest improvement.
That guard house stood at its post until 1886, when it too was abandoned. Fort Stockton, built, abandoned, rebuilt, and abandoned again. Some stories out here in West Texas don't end so much as they just go quiet.
What the marker says
Founded in 1859, Fort Stockton was abandoned during the Civil War and reestablished in 1867, when this guard house was built. Stone for the structure was quarried locally. The lumber was hauled from Indianola by oxcart. The guard house consisted of a room with arm and leg irons, a dungeon for solitary confinement, and quarters for guards. It was abandoned in 1886. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966.