Old Camp Wolters

The camp was named for a man whose career was law and politics. Jacob F. Wolters was born near New Ulm in 1871 and practiced in Houston. He led the anti-prohibition forces in 1908 and 1911, and lost the 1912 Democratic nomination for the Senate to John Morris Sheppard, the man the Possum Kingdom dam is named for. He helped elect William Hobby governor in 1918, organized the Fifty-sixth Cavalry Brigade in World War I, and commanded the Guard when martial law was declared at Longview, Corpus Christi, Galveston, Mexia and Borger. He died in 1935.

What the plaque says

Old Camp Wolters Established in 1925, Camp Wolters was named for Brigadier General Jacob F. Wolters, commander of the 56th Brigade for the National Guard, and designated a summer training site for horse-mounted cavalry units. The city of Mineral Wells donated fifty acres of land, and later thousands of acres were leased for the camp. By 1927 one thousand officers and men and the same number of horses were encamped here. In 1933 a Civilian Conservation Corps company set up camp at the National Guard barracks and made improvements at the camp and to the city park. In 1940 Camp Wolters was selected as a major training base for the National Military Draft. During World War II, the camp became an important infantry replacement training center on 7,500 acres of leased land with a troop capacity that reached a peak of 24,973. The internationally famous "F" Troop of World War II was one of the mounted units that trained here. German prisoners of war also were housed at the camp. After the war's end, the camp was deactivated by the army. The original Old Camp Wolters site was returned to the National Guard and used for local purposes until 1965. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 1.9 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Chandor Gardens — 16 mi
  A portrait painter's English-and-Chinese garden rooms, blasted and planted from a bare 3.5-acre hillside in Weatherford beginning in 1936, abandoned after 1978 and reopened by the city in 2002.

More markers nearby

• Fort Wolters — 1.3 mi
• Mineral Wells — 2.2 mi
• Famous Mineral Water Company — 2.2 mi
• Dr. H.H. Milling — 2.3 mi