Site of the First Fort Bliss

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm going to give it the full treatment it deserves. Way out in El Paso County, there's a spot of ground that has seen more coming and going than a train depot on a holiday weekend. It all started on September 14, 1849, when Brevet Major Jefferson Van Horne arrived with four companies of the Third United States Infantry and put down roots.

They called the place Post El Paso, and for a moment, it looked like something that might last. But nothing out here was ever quite that simple. By 1851, the post was vacated.

Just like that, the soldiers packed up and left. You can almost picture the dust settling behind them. Then, in 1854, the army came back.

They re-garrisoned the post, and this time they gave it a new name: Fort Bliss, in honor of Brevet Major William Wallace Smith Bliss. A man worth naming a fort after, apparently. And for a good long while, that name stuck to that ground like it had always been there.

But the Rio Grande had other ideas. The river, as rivers tend to do, kept creeping closer, encroaching on the fort's very foundation, until finally, in 1868, the decision was made to abandon it altogether. Not by enemy fire, not by any great calamity of human making, but by a river that simply refused to stay put.

The State of Texas put up a marker here in 1936, making sure nobody forgets what stood on this ground, a post that was born, abandoned, reborn, renamed, and finally surrendered, not to any army, but to the Rio Grande itself.

What the marker says

Established September 14, 1849 by Brevet Major Jefferson Van Horne with 4 companies of the Third United States Infantry and known as Post El Paso * Vacated in 1851 * Re-garrisoned in 1854 and named Fort Bliss in honor of Brevet Major William Wallace Smith Bliss * Abandoned in 1868 due to encroachment of the Rio Grande. Erected by the State of Texas 1936