Old Fort Cemetery

The civilians buried here lived in a county that was small and then shrank. When Pecos County was organized at St. Gall in 1875 it had 1,100 people. The agricultural census of 1880 counted 150 ranches and farms, most of them under ten acres, with about 2,500 acres planted in corn. In the 1880s the post closed, the county lost almost all of its small landholders, and parts of it were cut away to form Reeves, Terrell and Val Verde counties. By 1890 only twelve ranches remained, all but one larger than 500 acres.

What the plaque says

Old Fort Cemetery Burial ground for soldiers stationed at Fort Stockton and for civilians in the little town that grew up around the post. The fort was established 1859; temporarily closed 1861-1867. Troops here protected the San Antonio-San Diego mail line and quelled Indian raids into Mexico on the infamous Comanche Trail. This cemetery testifies to the hardships of frontier life: no headstone was erected for a person over 40. In 1888 (after the fort was permanently closed in 1886), remains of the 56 soldiers buried here were moved to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. (1968)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Historic Fort Stockton — 0.3 mi
  The Ninth Cavalry's post at Comanche Springs from 1867 to 1886, with its 1868 stone guardhouse, three adobe officers' quarters and barracks rebuilt from the original plans.
• Annie Riggs Memorial Museum — 0.6 mi
  An 1899 adobe hotel on Main Street that a twice-married frontier woman bought with her gunfighter husband's estate and ran as a boarding house until she died in 1931.
• Comanche Springs — 0.7 mi
  Once the sixth largest spring in Texas and a campground on the Comanche Trail to Mexico, pumped dry by 1961 under the rule of capture and now flowing again some winters.

More markers nearby

• Oil and Gas Industry in Pecos County — steps away
• Hovey School — 0.4 mi
• O. W. Williams — 0.4 mi
• Site of Comanche Springs — 0.5 mi