Route of Nolan Expedition

Historian Paul H. Carlson tells how former First Sergeant Umbles and a few men who had left the column reached Fort Concho on the evening of August 3 and reported the command lost and dying; Eastern newspapers wrote it off as massacred. A relief party covered the 140 miles to the Bull Creek base in 41 hours, and Nolan's men were back at the fort on August 14. Umbles and three others were court-martialed as deserters, dishonorably discharged and held at Fort Leavenworth. In 1978 eight Black riders from Lubbock retraced the route in cavalry uniform.

What the plaque says

Route of Nolan Expedition Army and civilian effort in 1877 to halt raiding of Chief "Old Black Horses" Comanches. In group were 60 Negro troops of Co. A, 10th U.S. Cavalry, and 22 buffalo hunters known as "The Forlorn Hope". Troops departed Fort Concho in early July, led by Capt. Nicholas Nolan. Eluded by Indians and finding water holes dry, on July 7 men were thirst-crazed. By drinking horse blood and urine, soldiers lived 86 parched hours; finally reached old supply base. Hunters left group; found water alone. All but 4 soldiers survived this heroic test of endurance. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Ranching Heritage Center — 28 mi
  A Texas Tech outdoor museum where ranch houses, barns, windmills and a depot from across the ranching country were moved one by one onto a single park beside the campus.
• Buddy Holly Center — 29 mi
  The city's museum of Buddy Holly and West Texas music in a 1928 railway depot, with the house where the Crickets worked on That'll Be the Day moved next door.
• Lubbock Lake Landmark — 30 mi
  A bend of Yellow House Draw on Lubbock's north edge where digging has found nearly 12,000 years of people on the Southern High Plains, layer on layer, from Clovis to the 1880s.
• American Windmill Museum — 30 mi
  Lubbock's park of restored water-pumping windmills and early wind chargers, more than 70 of them turning outdoors and the rare ones under roof, with a megawatt-era turbine overhead.

More markers nearby

• Brooks Blacksmith Shop — 3.0 mi
• Meadow United Methodist Church — 3.2 mi
• Site of Joe T. and Laura Hamilton Home — 7.5 mi
• Site of Primrose School — 8.0 mi