Fort Lancaster State Historic Site

On August 20, 1855, two companies of the First Infantry under Capt. Stephen D. Carpenter set up camp on Live Oak Creek, where clear water ran near the crossing of the Pecos on the lower road from San Antonio to El Paso. It became Fort Lancaster a year later, one of the most isolated posts in Texas, with a sutler and a mail stop as its only civilian life. The soldiers built in limestone and adobe and spent their days escorting mail and freight and patrolling the road. The Butterfield Overland Mail switched to this lower road in August 1859.

The fort also saw one of the army's more unusual experiments. In 1855 the War Department bought camels for desert transport and based them at Camp Verde, and all three camel expeditions passed through Fort Lancaster, in 1857, 1859 and 1860. Federal troops left on March 19, 1861. Texas troops held the road for a time, and by 1862 the fort stood empty.

In 1867 it became a sub-post of Fort Stockton for Company K of the Ninth Cavalry, Buffalo Soldiers. That December, about sixty men held it against a much larger force of Kickapoo fighters and their allies, a force the Texas Historical Commission estimates at 900 to 1,200. Three soldiers died. The THC calls it the only attack by Native Americans on a U.S. Army fort in Texas. The stone walls were later carried off to build in Sheffield, and what remains, more than 30 foundations on 82 acres, was excavated from 1966 to 1976.