The Eighth Infantry founded the post in March 1852 near the head of the San Saba River, as a guard for settlers and a rest stop on the road to California, and named it for Capt. Henry McKavett, killed at Monterrey in 1846. The army left in 1859 as travelers took a more southerly route. During the Civil War it briefly held Union prisoners. In 1868 the army came back, and Ranald Mackenzie arrived the next year with Black troops of the Forty-first Infantry to rebuild it in stone: four barracks, twelve officers' quarters, a hospital, bakery, magazine and a thirty-acre garden. The Forty-first became part of the Twenty-fourth Infantry, headquartered here. William T. Sherman, inspecting in 1871, called it the prettiest post in Texas.
Soldiers of all four Buffalo Soldier regiments served at Fort McKavett, and Sgt. Emanuel Stance of the Ninth Cavalry received the first Medal of Honor awarded to an African American soldier after the Civil War for service here. The post supplied military campaigns and mapping expeditions across West Texas until the army left in 1883.
Settlers moved straight into the empty buildings, and a town called Fort McKavett lived in them until the last residents moved out in 1973. That is why so much survives. The state made it a historic site in 1968. The restored barracks, headquarters, schoolhouse, dead house and officers' quarters stand beside the ruins of the commanding officer's house, which burned in 1941, and the visitor center is in the 1874 hospital.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour