Mackenzie Trail

Mackenzie's later career ran far from this road. In 1879 he took six cavalry companies to Colorado, where he told the Ute leaders at the Los Pinos agency that the only alternative to removal to Utah was war; two days later they started west. In 1881 he took field command against the Apaches in Arizona, then the District of New Mexico. Made a brigadier general, he was given the Department of Texas in October 1883 and planned to retire on land near Boerne, but by December he was gravely ill. He died on Staten Island in 1889.

What the plaque says

Mackenzie Trail (Merged at this point into SH 55) When the U.S. Army built forts Clark (70 mi. SW) and McKavett (90 mi. NE) in 1852, this frontier trail connected the posts. After Fort Concho was established in 1867, the trail was extended farther north, to present San Angelo. It was later named for Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie, the 1873 commander of Fort Clark, who traveled it in his campaigns against hostile Indians. One of its landmarks was Mackenzie Lake (6.5 mi. N), which furnished water for the troops, for cattle drives up the trail, for settlers, and for Texas Rangers on frontier patrols. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Devil's Sinkhole State Natural Area — 9.5 mi
  A 140-foot shaft into a cavern outside Rocksprings, seen only on guided tours from a platform at the rim as some three million bats spiral out on summer evenings.

More markers nearby

• Jess L. Hankins and King P-234 — 8.6 mi
• First Methodist Church of Rocksprings — 9.4 mi
• Gilmer Hotel — 9.5 mi
• Rocksprings Telephone Company — 9.5 mi