Fort Phantom Hill, C.S.A.

This marker stands on the courthouse square of the town that took the county seat from the fort. Anson began at Fort Phantom Hill, but John Merchant, expecting the Texas and Pacific to pass through, offered land at the present site, and McD. Bowyer and P. S. Tipton opened a store and hotel. The railroad never came. Jones City was declared county seat on July 17, 1881, and renamed Anson for Anson Jones by 1882. Elmer Withers designed the courthouse, finished in 1910 for $100,000, and Phillips Petroleum struck oil southwest of town in 1926.

What the plaque says

Located 10 miles east, 9 miles south on Old Butterfield Stageline. Upon secession, company of First Regiment Texas Mounted Rifles used it as an outpost to give protection against Indians. Stopover on way west for some Union sympathizers and people wanting to avoid conflict of war. In 1862 the frontier defense line was pulled back more than 30 miles east. However, scouting parties and patrols of Confederate and state troops intermittently visited the post in aggressive warfare to keep Indians near their camps and away from settlements and to check on invasion by Union forces. Usually supplying their own mounts, guns and sustenance, these men guarded the frontier until war's end. Texas Civil War Frontier Defense Texas had 2000 miles of coastline and frontier to defend from Union attack, Indian raids, marauders. Defense lines were set to give maximum protection with the few men left in the state. One line stretched from El Paso to Brownsville. Another had posts set a day's horseback ride apart from red River to the Rio Grande. Phantom Hill and other U. S. forts used by scouting parties lay in a line between. Behind these lines and to the east organized militia, citizens' posses from nearby settlements backed the Confederate and state troops to curb Indian raids. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy. Erected by the State of Texas 1963

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Phantom Hill — 15 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Frontier Texas! — 23 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.

More markers nearby

• Jones County — steps away
• Cowboys' Christmas Ball — 0.8 mi
• Site of Truby School — 8.3 mi
• Neinda Community — 11 mi