Site of Camp Wood

Lt. E. D. Philips and a company of the First Infantry first occupied the post, named for Brevet Major George W. F. Wood, and drew water from the same spring that had served the Spanish mission beside it. They left that October. Lt. John Bell Hood, later commander of Hood's Texas Brigade, reopened the camp in 1858 with a company of the Second Cavalry and stayed until November 1860. The buildings and a post cemetery still stood early in the twentieth century. The buildings have since disappeared, and the headstones were taken up to line a flower bed.

What the plaque says

Site of Camp Wood Established May 20, 1857, as a means of preventing Indian raids on the San Antonio - El Paso route and the Rio Grande Valley. Abandoned March 15, 1861, when Federal troops were withdrawn from Texas.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Real County Historical Museum — 16 mi
  A small county museum in Leakey, at the head of the Frio Canyon, with a log-cabin parlor, an 1880s horse-drawn hearse, a wool and mohair shearing machine and 1910s jail cells.
• Garner State Park — 17 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.
• Devil's Sinkhole State Natural Area — 26 mi
  A 140-foot shaft into a cavern outside Rocksprings, seen only on guided tours from a platform at the rim as some three million bats spiral out on summer evenings.
• Kickapoo Cavern State Park — 27 mi
  A lightly developed former ranch on the Kinney-Edwards line with twenty caves, a Saturday tour into a 1,400-foot cavern and a summer bat flight from Stuart Bat Cave.

More markers nearby

• Site of the Mission San Lorenzo de La Santa Cruz — steps away
• Private Frank Marshall, C.S.A. — steps away
• Charles A. Lindbergh in Texas — 0.4 mi
• Dixie Settlement — 3.5 mi