Camp Elizabeth

The Handbook of Texas says the camp began as a Texas Ranger post about 1853. Surveyor W. F. Kellis, who drew a diagram of it, remembered officers' quarters, a hospital, a farrier shop and rock corrals; the soldiers slept in tents nearby, water came from a spring on the North Concho, and the parade ground seems to have been used to teach horsemanship. Several Black troopers were stationed there. The camp was abandoned intact in 1886, and ranchers later razed its buildings because they objected to the unsavory characters who frequented them.

What the plaque says

Thought to have been established 1853. Used as an outpost hospital of Fort Concho 1874 - 1886.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Big Spring State Park — 31 mi
  A CCC drive looping up Scenic Mountain, a 200-foot bluff above the town that grew around the only dependable spring within sixty miles of open Llano country.
• Hangar 25 Air Museum — 32 mi
  A restored World War II hangar on the old air base above Big Spring, telling the story of the bombardier school of 1942 and of Webb Air Force Base, which trained pilots until 1977.
• Hotel Settles — 32 mi
  Big Spring's fifteen-story hotel of 1930, built on ranch oil money, once the tallest building between Fort Worth and El Paso, empty and roosted in by pigeons for decades and now restored.

More markers nearby

• Site of Town of Cummins — 7.5 mi
• Sterling County — 9.2 mi
• First Commercial Oil Well in Howard County — 20 mi
• Glasscock County — 21 mi