Site of Confederate Prison Compound

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it straight along to you. Before the war, this spot on Buffalo Bayou was about as unglamorous as useful gets. A warehouse.

Goods moving in, goods moving out, the bayou doing its steady work. Nobody was writing songs about it. But then 1861 arrived, and this whole city started pulling on a different kind of weight.

Houston became headquarters for the Military District of Texas, and that district, if you can believe it, stretched all the way out to include Arizona and New Mexico. That is a lot of territory for one city to answer for. And Houston answered.

Troop training fields, military hospitals, an ammunition depot, two foundries, five railroads. The Confederacy needed a workhorse, and Houston was it. Now, that old warehouse by the bayou, it got a new assignment too.

At times during the years 1861 to 1865, the building standing right here held prisoners of war. And then comes January of 1863, the moment this place really earns its place in the record. General John B.

Magruder, commanding the Houston-based Confederate army, had been busy. His forces captured 350 Federal soldiers, and those men ended up right here, packed into what had lately been a shipping warehouse. Three hundred and fifty men.

And this wasn't even the only place Houston was keeping prisoners. The city had two other compounds holding men as well. So here you have it, a bayou warehouse that went from moving freight to holding men, in a city that had quietly become one of the most strategically loaded places in the entire Confederacy.

The bayou kept rolling past either way.

What the marker says

Before 1861, site of warehouse serving Buffalo Bayou shipping. At times during 1861-65, the building here housed prisoners of war. In Jan. 1863 it held 350 Federals captured by Houston-based Confederate army of Gen. John B. Magruder. The city also had two other compounds where prisoners of war were held. Among many Houston enterprises vital to the Confederacy were troop training fields, military hospitals, an ammunition depot, two foundries, five railroads. City was headquarters for the Military District of Texas, which included Arizona and New Mexico.