Fort Griffin State Historic Site

On July 31, 1867, Lt. Col. Samuel D. Sturgis led four companies of the Sixth Cavalry onto a plateau above a bend of the Clear Fork of the Brazos. First called Camp Wilson, the post was renamed for Gen. Charles Griffin, who had died of yellow fever in Galveston. The plan called for stone, but only six of more than ninety structures were ever built wholly of it; the rest were pickets, logs and canvas, and an 1872 inspection declared the post unfit for human habitation. It stayed in use nine more years.

Fort Griffin was the hub of the defense line from Fort Richardson to the Big Bend and a main supply base for Col. Ranald Mackenzie in the Red River War of 1874. Buffalo Soldiers and Tonkawa scouts from the fort served in the campaigns that ended Kiowa and Comanche control of northern Texas. The Tonkawa, whose descendants are the Tonkawa Tribe of Oklahoma, lived near the post.

By 1879 the southern buffalo herd was gone and the frontier had moved on, and on May 31, 1881, the last company marched out for Fort Clark. Today the mess hall, barracks, first sergeant's quarters, bakery, magazine and a hand-dug well stand in ruins on the plateau, and the visitor center explains why the Army chose the spot. The site keeps the Official State of Texas Longhorn Herd, animals of the breed driven up the Western Trail past the fort from 1876 to 1885, and the dark ranch country around it makes for monthly star parties.