Ranger Campsite

The Handbook of Texas says Maltby commanded Company E only from May 5 to December 13, 1874, then returned to Burnet County. After a Reconstruction court-martial in 1864 he had signed a Union loyalty oath and ranched with G. C. Arnett, driving cattle to Calvert, New Orleans and Kansas. In 1878 he moved to a Callahan County farm and became a booster and noted horticulturist, going with the Texas agricultural exhibit to Chicago in 1891. His 1906 memoir, Captain Jeff, may be exaggerated, historian Rupert N. Richardson wrote, but it is valuable for its view of frontier life.

What the plaque says

One-half mile east of here, some twenty-five to thirty Texas rangers of Company E were stationed in 1874, under the command of Capt. W. J. "Jeff" Maltby. They kept sentries posted on nearby "Ranger Peak" to guard against Indians. Remains of a dry well they dug are still visible. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 14 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.
• Abilene State Park — 16 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 18 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Carnegie Library of Ballinger — 24 mi
  A 1909 limestone library with an Ionic portico in a railroad town the Santa Fe created in 1886, one of the few Texas Carnegie libraries still working in its original building.

More markers nearby

• Ranger Peak — steps away
• Cotton Production in Runnels County — steps away
• Old Townsite of Content — 0.9 mi
• Atoka Cemetery — 5.5 mi