Camp Breckenridge, C.S.A.

Col. James M. Norris set up Camp Breckenridge on March 21, 1862, on Gunsolus Creek six miles above Hubbard Creek, garrisoning it with half of Capt. John A. Salmon's company. The Handbook of Texas says the camp gave little real service. In 1863 Capt. Robert M. Whiteside wrote that the only duty done well was carrying the mail, because the patrols kept the horses poor and the raiders could outrun them. A report late that year found only twenty-six of fifty-four men in camp. The post was abandoned in 1864, though settlers took refuge there during Reconstruction.

What the plaque says

Established near this site 1862. Part Confederate frontier defense line from Red River to Rio Grande. Occupied by company of Texas Frontier Regiment. Posts were day's horseback ride apart and area patrolled regularly. Duties included curbing Indian raids, rounding up draft evaders and renegades. Confederates were poorly fed, clothed and lacked horses, ammunition. They shared few of the glories of the war, but at the cost of the lives of not a few of them, these men gave a measure of protection to a vast frontier area. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy; Erected by the State of Texas 1963

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Griffin State Historic Site — 22 mi
  The ruins of an 1867 cavalry post on a plateau above the Clear Fork of the Brazos, judged unfit for habitation and used nine more years, now home to the official state longhorn herd.
• Old Jail Art Center — 23 mi
  An art museum in Albany's 1878 stone jail, where the masons carved their initials to be sure of pay, now holding Chinese tomb figures and works by Picasso and Klee.
• Old Rip at the Eastland County Courthouse — 25 mi
  A horned lizard in a glass-topped casket in the 1928 Eastland courthouse, the creature said to have come out alive from the old building's cornerstone after thirty-one years.
• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — 30 mi
  Graham's 1936 Art Moderne post office, with a New Deal mural by Alexandre Hogue inside, now the free museum of Young County in the town where the Texas cattle raisers first organized.

More markers nearby

• Stephens County Courthouse — steps away
• Walter Prescott Webb's Formative Years — steps away
• Picketville — 1.4 mi
• Parks Camp — 6.5 mi