Fort Duncan sits on the Rio Grande above Eagle Pass, across from Piedras Negras. Capt. Sidney Burbank brought three companies of the First Infantry here on March 27, 1849, onto land owned by John Twohig, and the post was named that November for James Duncan of the Mexican War. It watched the trade crossing at Eagle Pass and the California Road and was placed for scouting along the river. In 1855 the Texan James Callahan crossed into Mexico, chasing Lipan Apaches and people who had escaped slavery, and burned Piedras Negras; the fort's commanders would not help him back.
The fort matters most for what happened on August 16, 1870. John Kibbetts, leader of the Black Seminoles living at Nacimiento in Coahuila, was sworn in here as a sergeant, and ten of his men enlisted as privates, the first of the Seminole scouts. Their families camped on Elm Creek near the fort, and more bands came in the next years before the army moved them all to Fort Clark in 1876. Eagle Pass is also home to the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, a federally recognized nation whose reservation lies on the river south of town.
The army kept a small post here into the twentieth century; in 1916 some 16,000 troops crowded in during the troubles in Mexico. The city made it Fort Duncan Park in 1935. Seven original buildings are restored, and the headquarters is the museum, telling the fort's long tie to the town.
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