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By Eileen Mattei  “The prettiest post in Texas” is how General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman described Fort McKavett in 1871. Still meriting Sherman’s designation 138 years later, Fort McKavett State Historic Site perches above the San Saba River in Menard County on a grassy hilltop. Its 16 completely restored, whitewashed-limestone barracks, hospital, and headquarters (several other buildings are partially restored or in ruins) comprise what has been called the best preserved, most intact example of a Texas frontier fort.
In the quiet that surrounds Fort McKavett, it’s easy to imagine bugle calls, the creak of saddlery, and the snort of horses. It looks like the 600 soldiers posted here and their families moved out only yesterday.
Fort McKavett was a link in a chain of frontier forts—including forts Chadbourne, Belknap, Mason and Phantom Hill—that protected Western travelers and settlers. Fort McKavett soldiers escorted wagon trains and mail coaches, scouted the region, and built roads and telegraph lines. Patrols of 15 to 25 soldiers rode out for several days to a few weeks at a time, sometimes skirmishing with hostile raiding parties, but never fighting in large-scale battles.
Built in 1852 by the 8th Infantry near the source of the San Saba River, and set on the San Antonio-to-El Paso road, Fort McKavett was originally named Camp San Saba. Soldiers quarried nearby stone and felled oaks for the fort, which was renamed for an officer in the Mexican-American War. Abandoned in 1859, when the region appeared peaceful, Fort McKavett was reopened in 1868, and rebuilt and expanded in 1869, by General Ranald Mackenzie’s troops when the Army resumed its protection campaigns after the Civil War.
The black troops of Fort McKavett’s Tenth Cavalry were the first to be called Buffalo Soldiers by the Comanches, in reference to their buffalo-like tenacity. Companies of all four Buffalo Soldier regiments were stationed at Fort McKa-vett during its heyday. The segregated units of Buffalo Soldiers did the same work and received the same pay and honors as their white peers. One African-American soldier stationed at Fort McKavett, Sgt. Emmanuel Stance, saved a wagon train under attack. For his bravery, Stance was awarded the Medal of Honor, the first African-American so honored after the Civil War.
A self-guided walking tour starts at the high-ceilinged post hospital, ingeniously ventilated by a system that draws cool air in from open windows and expels it through a long cupola. The interpretive center here uses photos and artifacts to present the routines of everyday life at the fort—hauling water barrels from Government Springs, preparing mounted patrols to ride out, unloading wagon trains from San Antonio (seven days away) piled with tobacco and other supplies.
The Dead House, or morgue, displays primitive medical equipment and describes concoctions laced with cocaine, opium, or morphine, which were used to treat illnesses.
Of the 16 historic structures that have survived, four are furnished as they would have been in the post’s later years.
The view from the fort’s parade grounds has barely changed through the years—no power lines or communications towers intrude on the past.
When you visit the fort, be sure to explore the old cemetery, which lies a half-mile away. At its center, a grassy area without markers is the resting place of several soldiers, family members, and civilians that the Friends of McKavett identified from post records.
Isolated now as then, Fort McKavett State Historic Site shares its unsullied night skies with amateur astronomers at star-gazing parties. Just think: Under the same view of distant stars, the soldiers of another century listened to the bugler playing “Taps.”
See the full article in the March 2009 issue. Subscribe Order back issues |
