Fort Richardson

Fort Richardson's brief importance can be counted. Fifty-five stone, picket and lumber buildings went up at a cost near $800,000, and in 1872 its 666 officers and men made it the largest garrison at any United States military installation. Three regiments were headquartered here in ten years, the Sixth and Fourth Cavalry and the Eleventh Infantry. Thirteen men of the Sixth won the Medal of Honor after Kicking Bird's Kiowa and Comanche warriors ambushed Captain McClellan's patrol on the Little Wichita in July 1870. Under Colonel Mackenzie, the Fourth Cavalry marched from here onto the Llano Estacado.

What the plaque says

Fort Richardson As partially reconstructed in 1936. Established by the United States War Department on November 26, 1867 as a protection of the frontier against hostile Indians. Named in honor of General Israel B. Richardson, U.S.A., killed at Antietam, September 17, 1862. Abandoned May 23, 1878 as the line of settlement had passed westward.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 1.5 mi
  The northernmost post of the Texas frontier line, outside Jacksboro, where a stone hospital and six other buildings stand from 1867 and a later Guard unit became the Lost Battalion.
• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — 26 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

• Mobilization Site of Lost Battalion — steps away
• James B. Dosher — 0.4 mi
• Butterfield Stage Line — 0.7 mi
• Fort Richardson — 0.7 mi