Frontier Times
Take a Mid-1800s Detour to the THC’s West Texas Forts
Travelers heading west of San Antonio on Interstate 10 can witness the landscape transform. Hills and cedars slowly become mesas and mesquites. Green fades into orange. It’s easy to imagine the frontier out here, and that’s the primary preservation goal of the Texas Historical Commission’s (THC) forts staff.
A couple years ago, two of the forts—McKavett and Lancaster—wrapped up impressive projects that help visitors experience what life was like in the wilds of West Texas more than 150 years ago. Both sites are telling their distinctive stories via refurbished attractions, including telegraph lines, stabilized ruins, and visitor centers.
Fort McKavett’s telegraph-line idea was first raised by Assistant Site Manager Kevin Malcolm, who had been long intrigued by the fort’s cutting-edge communications system introduced in 1875.
“Kevin has a military and engineering background, so he proposed the initial idea and we just spitballed off that,” says Site Manager Cody Mobley. “No other site in Texas interprets this aspect of military history, and we’re proud to be able to tell the story here at Fort McKavett.”
A few years ago, Malcolm and Mobley developed an ambitious plan to not only reintroduce the telegraph line, but to authentically install it themselves.
“We tried to incorporate historic materials as much as we could with period construction methods,” Malcolm says. “It was really interesting to think about what kinds of factors they’d have to consider out here in 1875. We even had horses draw the logs up, just like they would have back then.”
The project reflects Fort McKavett’s mission to educate visitors with an authentic, grassroots approach.
“We had the motivation and means to take care of just about everything for this project—it helps us control costs and maintain quality,” Mobley says. “As long as it’s in the site’s master plan, we’ll try to take care of it ourselves.”
LIFE AT LANCASTER
About 100 miles west lies the THC’s Fort Lancaster and Battlefield, which offers a different view of frontier Texas in the 1850s. Although the original adobe structures were claimed by the elements decades ago, the sweeping vistas of the region are an undeniable attraction.
“Fort Lancaster is a great stop to experience life at a frontier fort,” says Melissa Hagins, executive director of the Texas Pecos Trail Region. “Being on the grounds you can really experience what it was like to live in the middle of nowhere with the wide-open spaces.”
Site Manager Jefferson Spilman agrees, adding, “You don’t really have to imagine what it looked like on the frontier out here—you’re literally experiencing it.”
Spilman explains that soldiers constructed the buildings in the mid-1850s using a combination of limestone blocks and adobe bricks. Over the past 170 years, these materials were lost to the elements, so the only physical remnants are a few well-intentioned reconstructions from decades ago.
Spilman and his staff worked with THC architects, historical contractors Phoenix 1, and an adobe brick company in Marfa for masonry and adobe restoration at Barracks Company H near the newly renovated visitor center. The project stabilized existing masonry by repointing mortar joints and using salvaged stone.
“A big part of the project was to square away the corners and add several layers of adobe brick to help visitors really visualize what the buildings looked like back then,” he says.
In 2022, Spilman and other THC staff completed another preservation project at the far end of the fort’s massive parade ground. They used a new Ground Penetrating Radar device to survey the fort’s cemetery to confirm the gravesite of Private J.H. Norris, who died in November 1861 from pneumonia while stationed at Fort Lancaster.
A monument was placed at his gravesite in January 1862; the original headstone remains at Norris’ grave and is now preserved in an enclosure. Fort staff also confirmed four additional graves in the cemetery.
“Sometimes people come out here to enjoy that the site hasn’t changed much—they find comfort in the stability,” Spilman says. “But we also want to provide updated insights about the fort and new ways for people to learn more about this great site in Texas history.”
Learn more about these and the THC’s other frontier outposts—Fort Griffin in Albany and Fort Martin Scott in Fredericksburg—at TexasHistoricSites.com.
