Site of Mackenzie Cavalry Camp

The December night was not Mackenzie's first time in this country. His Fourth Cavalry had visited Tahoka Lake in 1872, and in November 1874, weeks before the snowstorm, his troops attacked a small encampment near Double Lakes and another at Tahoka Lake. The town that grew up at the campsite came much later. William Green of Shiner founded Wilson in 1912 to settle Central Texas German farmers on old Wilson County school lands in Lynn County, which gave the town its name. It reached 250 people in 1930 and 400 from 1950 to 1970.

What the plaque says

Site of Mackenzie Cavalry Camp At or near this spot, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie, with two companies of United States 4th Cavalry, was overtaken on Dec. 4, 1874, by a snowstorm. Forced to spend the night here without wood or water, or grass for the horses, troops called this the most miserable night of their duty in the Southwest. Several horses froze to death. MacKenzie was hunting here for straggling Indians, during last weeks of 1874 campaign to confine tribes to reservations. On Dec. 5 his troops reached Tahoka Lake, where they found shelter under a cliff. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Slaton Harvey House — 9.9 mi
  A 1912 Santa Fe Harvey House in the railroad town of Slaton, restored as a museum, event hall and five-room inn overlooking a working BNSF yard.
• American Windmill Museum — 19 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.
• Buddy Holly Center — 19 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.
• National Ranching Heritage Center — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• Lynn County — 8.1 mi
• Mercy Hospital — 8.9 mi
• Slaton Bakery — 9.4 mi
• Slaton Volunteer Fire Department — 9.4 mi