Main Supply Camp on Historic Mackenzie Trail

The camp sat on the White River, the old Freshwater Fork. The river rises where Callahan and Runningwater draws meet west of Floydada and runs southeast for sixty-two miles, through Blanco Canyon and the White River Reservoir, to the Salt Fork of the Brazos in Kent County; Pete, Crawfish and Davidson creeks feed it. Traders and hunters from eastern New Mexico knew it long before settlers came, and its Spanish name, Blanco, was anglicized. Mackenzie's 1871 supply camp near the canyon mouth, Anderson's Fort, is on the National Register.

What the plaque says

Main Supply Camp on Historic Mackenzie Trail (3 mi. SE) Trail followed by Gen. Ranald Mackenzie, U.S. 4th Cavalry in 1871 frontier campaign. He camped at Dewey Lake after brush with Indians. In 1872, he was again ordered to ferret out the Comanches. From his main supply camp on Brazos River Freshwater Fork (now White River), he launched a drive against Quanah Parker. Ended with fights in Palo Duro and Tule Canyons, last battles between Indians and Cavalry in this area; opened the Plains to white settlement. 1967

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum — 3.6 mi
  Crosbyton's museum of Blanco Canyon, built in 1958 as a copy of Hank Smith's Rock House, and the place to learn the canyon's 1871 fight between Mackenzie's cavalry and Quanah's Quahadi Comanche.
• Spur-Dickens County Museum — 23 mi
  Dickens County's museum on the main block of Spur, a town born on November 1, 1909, when the first train reached the land a New York syndicate was selling off from the Spur Ranch.
• Motley County Historical Museum — 31 mi
  Matador's museum in the 1928 Traweek Hospital, in the county seat a Scottish-owned ranch created by having its cowboys open one-day businesses to pass a state rule.

More markers nearby

• Texas Ranger Campsite — steps away
• Battle of the Freshwater Fork of the Brazos — steps away
• Two-Buckle Ranch Headquarters, Kentucky Cattle Raising Company — steps away
• Old Dewey Lake — steps away