Old Ringgold Barracks Hospital

Duane's take

The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just the voice carrying it down the road. Out here in Starr County, there's a building that carries more history in its arches than most structures manage in their whole foundation. We're talking about the Old Ringgold Barracks Hospital; and friend, this is not your standard frontier sickbay.

Whoever drew up those plans for the surgeon general had something grander in mind. The style is Moorish. Moorish architecture, out here on the Texas frontier: wide surrounding porches dressed up with fifteen-foot arches.

You take a moment to picture that. Those arches standing tall, framing the brush country air, ornamental and serious all at once. That hospital first opened its doors on November 25th, 1870.

And then it just kept going. Kept going and going. Soldiers came, soldiers went, the decades stacked up like rings in an old live oak.

Seventy-five years that building served, right up until the post was inactivated in 1944. Seventy-five years of Moorish arches watching over the sick and the healing, out on the edge of the Rio Grande country. Some buildings hold a place.

Some buildings hold time itself. This one did both.

What the marker says

Architecture Moorish; wide surrounding porches ornamented with 15' arches. Built according to plans of surgeon general. First occupied Nov. 25, 1870, and used for 75 years until post was inactivated in 1944. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965