Site of Anderson's Fort or Soldier's Mound

The ridge has carried several names. Soldiers called it Anderson's Fort for Major Thomas Anderson, who first walled it with sandbags and rock, and Lawton's Supply Camp for Lieutenant H. W. Lawton, Mackenzie's quartermaster. Mackenzie drew supplies from it in 1871 and 1872 and again in 1874 and 1875, and he withdrew there to recover after the fights at Tule and Palo Duro canyons. Buffalo hunters camped on it in the 1870s. In 1883 R. B. Faulkner built a store at its foot, and a post office called Mound lasted until 1884.

What the plaque says

Site of Anderson's Fort or Soldier's Mound Here behind extensive breastworks Major Thomas M. Anderson, Tenth U. S. Infantry, maintained a supply camp for the Cavalry under General Ranald S. Mackenzie, Fourth U.S. Cavalry, who in 1874-1875 forced the Indians of the region onto reservations and opened the plains to white settlement.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spur-Dickens County Museum — 3.5 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.
• Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• In Memory Of Private Gregg, William Max, W. H. Kilpatrick — 3.3 mi
• Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at Spur — 3.8 mi
• Espuela — 4.4 mi
• Dickens County — 6.6 mi