Site of Confederate Park

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Site of Confederate Park, right here in Tarrant County. Now, it starts, as so many Texas stories do, with one man and a big idea. That man was Khleber M.

Van Zandt, a local businessman, and in 1889 he organized the Robert E. Lee camp of the United Confederate Veterans. One camp.

One man's initiative. But give it a little over a decade, and that single camp would be claiming more than 700 members by the year 1900. Seven hundred.

That's not a camp anymore; that's a movement. Then in 1901, the camp received a 25-year charter to create the Confederate Park Association, and they got to work. They purchased 373 acres near this very site, land set aside (in their own words) for the 'recreation, refuge and relief of Confederate soldiers' and their families.

There's something almost solemn in that phrase. Refuge and relief. These were old men by then, carrying the weight of a war that had ended decades before.

So they built something of their own. The opening events gave you a sense of what this place meant to people. June 20th, 1902: a picnic for veterans and their families.

And then, the following year, a statewide reunion that ran September 8th through the 12th, 1903, drawing 3,500 attendees from across Texas. For years after that, the park thrived as a center for the civic and social life of Texas Confederate organizations. But time, as it does, kept moving.

By 1924, the numbers of surviving veterans had greatly diminished. The men who had given the park its entire reason for being were nearly gone. And so, when the 25-year charter finally expired in 1926, the Confederate Park Association voluntarily dissolved.

No fight, no drama; just an ending that matched the math. The charter ran out. So did the generation it was built to serve.

What the marker says

Local businessman Khleber M. Van Zandt organized the Robert E. Lee camp of the United Confederate Veterans in 1889. By 1900 it boasted more than 700 members. The camp received a 25-year charter to create the Confederate Park Association in 1901, then purchased 373 acres near this site for the "recreation, refuge and relief of Confederate soldiers" and their families. Opening events included a picnic for veterans and families on June 20, 1902, and a statewide reunion September 8-12, 1903, with 3,500 attendees. The park thrived as a center for the civic and social activities of Texas Confederate organizations. By 1924 the numbers of surviving veterans had greatly diminished, and the Confederate Park Association voluntarily dissolved when its charter expired in 1926. (2000)