Fort Richardson

For Satanta and Ado-eete, called Big Tree, Fort Richardson was the last stop before the Jacksboro courthouse in July 1871, where they became the first Native leaders tried for murder in a Texas civil court. Both were convicted and sentenced to hang. Governor Edmund J. Davis, pressed by humanitarians and wary of Kiowa retribution, commuted the sentences to life. Paroled in 1873, Satanta was rearrested in 1874 and took his own life in the Huntsville penitentiary in 1878. In 1963 his grandson, the Kiowa artist James Auchiah, had him reburied beside Satank at Fort Sill.

What the plaque says

Fort Richardson Established November 26, 1867 by the United States Army to defend the frontier against the Indians. A mail station on the Butterfield Overland Stage Line, 1858-1861. Abandoned as a military post May 23, 1879.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Richardson State Park and Historic Site — 0.9 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

• Butterfield Stage Line — steps away
• Jack County — 0.3 mi
• Birthplace of Texas 4-H Clubs — 0.3 mi
• Old Jack County Courthouse Cornerstone — 0.3 mi