Fort Leaton State Historic Site

Ben Leaton did not live long in his fort. He died in 1851 deep in debt, and his farm, worked by eight to ten American hands with a gravity irrigation ditch, could not save the place. The property passed to John Burgess, who held the mortgage. Burgess was killed in 1875 by Leaton's son Bill, and Burgess's descendants went on living in the adobe into the 1920s. Then it stood empty.

In 1934 T. C. Mitchell and the Marfa State Bank bought the ruin and gave it to the county as a historic site, and a county works project began restoring it before the money ran out. A. C. Skidmore later bought the property and gave it to the state, and in 1968 it became Fort Leaton State Historic Site.

The restoration that followed was guided by digging. Archaeologists found in 1969 that the adobe walls went up in three phases, and in 1971 they uncovered nine more rooms, a ramada, a corral and the line of the north wall. They found nothing older than the 1820s, which tells against the old stories that a Spanish mission or presidio stood on this spot. The rooms you walk through were rebuilt to match that evidence, with walls rising 18 to 22 feet.

The site is open daily except Christmas, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with a self-guided tour brochure all year and guided tours from November through April. It is also the western entrance to Big Bend Ranch State Park, and a good place to pick up permits for it.