Fort Graham

Fort Graham was a listening post more than a fortress. The Handbook of Texas says no fighting occurred between soldiers and Native people near it; the garrison escorted Indian agents to councils on the upper Brazos and reported what it learned. Major Ripley Arnold, who founded it, left in June 1849 to establish Fort Worth. He came back in 1853 to help close the post, and on September 6 he had the surgeon, Josephus Steiner, arrested; in the dispute that followed Steiner killed him. A civil court acquitted Steiner in 1854. The fort closed that November.

What the plaque says

Fort Graham The Commission allocated $6,700 for the purchase of the fifty-acre site and the reconstruction of the barracks, partly from the original stone. The property is deeded to the Hill County Commissioners Court and is supervised by four trustees. The building and grounds are used for public gatherings and as a meeting place for civic organizations. A bronze plaque on a small granite monument briefly relates the history of the fort. J. O. Galbraith, architect, drew the plans for the reconstruction. Reconstructed Barracks of Fort Graham A frontier military post established on the site of a Waco Indian village by Brevet Major R. A. Arnold, Second United States Dragoons, on March 27, 1849. Named in honor of Lt. Col. William M. Graham who fell at Molina del Rey, September 8, 1847. Abandoned November 9, 1853, after settlements had been made further west.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hill County Courthouse — 15 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Bosque Museum — 19 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Cleburne State Park — 20 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.
• Meridian State Park — 20 mi
  A 505-acre park in Bosque County where World War I veterans of a Civilian Conservation Corps company dammed Bee Creek in 1933-34 for a 72-acre lake and cut stone buildings around it.

More markers nearby

• Huron — 3.1 mi
• Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church — 5.3 mi
• Boesch House — 5.3 mi
• Whitney — 5.4 mi