Site of Fort Inge

The fort stood on the east bank of the Leona River, which rises north of Uvalde and runs eighty-three miles southeast past Uvalde and Batesville to the Frio near Dilley. Archeologists have found middens, hearths and campsites along it from the Late Paleo-Indian through the Late Prehistoric periods, and Alonso de Leon may have reached it in 1689. By 1875 an irrigation ditch carried its water to farms on the east side, until an 1894 flood broke a railroad bridge and ruined many of them. In the drought of the 1950s the river dried up.

What the plaque says

Site of Fort Inge Established by Captain Sidney Burbank, first U. S. Infantry, on March 13, 1849. Named in honor of Lieutenant Zebulon M. P. Inge, who fell at Resaca de la Palma May 9, 1846. Protected the southern Overland Mail route from Indians raids. Federal troops, withdrawn in 1961, reoccupied the post from 1866 to February 28, 1869. Later a Texas Ranger camp.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Inge Historical Site — steps away
  A county park on the Leona River below a 140-foot volcanic plug, where an army post guarded the new road to El Paso from 1849 to 1869 and Texas Rangers camped after.
• Uvalde Grand Opera House — 2.5 mi
  An 1891 Victorian opera house on the Uvalde square with a turret and a dragon weathervane, once owned by John Nance Garner and still staging volunteer theater upstairs.
• Briscoe-Garner Museum — 2.8 mi
  The Uvalde house of John Nance Garner, the vice president who made the office a power in Congress, now a free museum to him and to Governor Dolph Briscoe.

More markers nearby

• Site of Fort Inge — steps away
• Reading Wood Black — 2.5 mi
• Fort Inge, Camp Dix, C.S.A. — 2.5 mi
• Early Texas Wagon Yards — 2.5 mi