DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker for Old Fort Mason is the text I'm working from, and I'll do my best to give it the telling it deserves. Now, before there was a town of Mason, before there was much of anything out here but sky and cedar and the sound of the wind moving through the hills, there was water. A spring.
And long before any soldier ever set foot on this ground, Indians knew that spring well. They'd been using it longer than anyone was keeping records. When the Army decided to build a fort out here on the Texas frontier, they did it right.
They quarried the stone straight from Post Hill — cut it out of the earth nearby and stacked it into something that was meant to last. Fort Mason, they called it, and its purpose was plain: help protect the Texas frontier. Now.
Here's where the story gets heavy. In February of 1860, a colonel by the name of Robert E. Lee took command of Fort Mason.
He'd already been stationed in Texas two years. And somewhere between February 1860 and February 1861 — right here, at this stone fort built beside an old Indian spring — he made one of the most consequential decisions in American history. You can almost feel the weight of it standing here.
The man is pacing, or maybe he's sitting still, which is sometimes worse. And he puts it into words. "If the Union is dissolved," he said, "I shall return to my native state and — save in defense — draw my sword on none." Friends, that is a man choosing his path and knowing full well the cost of it. On February 13, 1861, Lee left Fort Mason.
He walked away from this post, from this spring, from these hill country stone walls, and the war that was coming swallowed him whole. He carried something with him, though — or maybe it carried him. In the wartime that followed, he remembered what he'd seen of Texas soldiers.
Remembered it enough to say it out loud: "The enemy never sees the backs of Texans." High praise from a man who, by then, had seen quite a lot. A spring, a hill, some quarried stone, and a decision that changed everything. That's Old Fort Mason.
What the marker says
Situated near a spring long used by Indians; built of stone quarried from post hill. Fort helped protect Texas frontier from Indians. Colonel Robert E. Lee, stationed in Texas 2 years, commanded Fort Mason from February 1860 to February 1861. Here he made his decision as to his part in the Civil War, saying: "If the Union is dissolved,...I shall return to my native state and...save in defense...draw my sword on none". He left Fort Mason February 13, 1861. In wartime he remembered "the enemy never sees the backs of Texans". (1965)