Dove Creek Battlefield

The fight ended near dark in rain and confusion, and the battered Texans fell back to Spring Creek, three miles away, where the militia had been tending its wounded. That night the rain turned to heavy snow. Cold and hungry, the men stayed through the next day and ate some of their horses to survive. On January 11 they retreated east, carrying the wounded on litters strapped between pairs of horses, and found food and shelter at John Chisum's ranch near the Concho and Colorado rivers. The ground is private ranch land.

What the plaque says

Dove Creek Battlefield Around this mountain a battle was fought on January 8, 1865 between 2000 Indians and Texas Rangers and State Troops commanded by Captains John Fossett and S. S. Totten. Four officers and 22 of their men lie in unmarked graves nearby.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Angelo State Park — 23 mi
  A 7,677-acre park around O.C. Fisher Reservoir on the edge of San Angelo, where four Texas landscapes meet and the state's official longhorn herd grazes beside a bison paddock.
• Concho River Walk — 24 mi
  Four miles of lit trails along the North Concho through downtown San Angelo, rebuilt after voters taxed themselves in 2004, with gardens, sculpture, a river stage and stocked trout.
• Fort Concho National Historic Landmark — 25 mi
  The stone post at the forks of the Concho, headquarters of the Tenth Cavalry from 1875 to 1882, saved by a woman with a museum and now a city-run landmark of 23 original buildings.
• San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts — 25 mi
  A free art museum on the Concho beside Fort Concho, founded in the fort's 1868 quartermaster building and known nationally for its biennial ceramics competition.

More markers nearby

• Dove Creek Battle — 7.6 mi
• Sherwood Courthouse — 7.6 mi
• Knickerbocker — 7.8 mi
• Knickerbocker Schools — 7.9 mi