Fort Phantom Hill

Fort Phantom Hill is a United States Army installation located ain Jones County, Texas. The fort was active from 1852 to 1853 and again from 1856 until the 1890s. The fort was first established in 1852 as part of a line of forts in Texas intended to protect migrants traveling to California.

Use as military outpost

Fort McKavett was established during the American colonization of Texas, a process that began in the 1820s with the immigration of Anglo-Americans into Spanish, later Mexican, Texas.

After existing as an independent republic for a decade, Texas was annexed by the United States of America in 1845, which led to the start of the Mexican-American War the next year. The United States defeated Mexico, and in the treaty that ended the war in 1848 annexed what is presently the Southwestern United States. The next year, gold was discovered in California, enticing an unprecedented number of white migrants to go west, across Texas. To protect them, the US Army established a line of forts in Texas long from Fort Worth to Fort Duncan in 1848–49. In 1851, General Persifor Frazer Smith, commander of the Department of Texas, inspected those posts and ordered that a second line of forts be established farther west. The forts of that line – Belknap, Chadbourne, Clark, Mason, McKavett, Phantom Hill, and Terrett – were established between June 24, 1851, and November 18, 1852, along the trails through Texas.

First occupation by the US Army, 1851–59

The post was established on November 14, 1851Carter, R.G., On the Border with Mackenzie, 1935, Washington D.C.: Enyon Printing Co. by five companies of the 5th Infantry under Brevet Lt. Colonel John Joseph AbercrombieHatcher, J.H., 1963, Fort Phantom Hill, in Texas Military History, A Quarterly Publication of the National Guard Association of Texas, Vol. 3, Fall, 1963, No. 3 and just a year later was transformed into a well-organized and thoroughly developed post. Henry Hopkins Sibley assumed command on September 24, 1853.

Conditions continued to be difficult for people at the fort, and in November 1853, approval was given for the military to abandon the fort. Shortly after the troops left on April 6, 1854, fire destroyed most of the log walls and thatch roofs of the buildings that made up this large and complex five-company post on the Texas frontier. Several stone buildings, stone chimneys, and the stone building foundations remain intact today. A watercolor by J.B. Miller in the Center for American History in Austin shows Fort Phantom Hill as it was before the fire.

In 1858, the property was reoccupied as a way station (No. 54) on the Southern Overland Mail route, Butterfield Stagecoach, at the abandoned fort until 1861.

Use by Confederate Texas, 1861–65

Fort Phantom Hill was used again during the Civil War by the Confederacy's Frontier Battalion, and after the Civil War, in 1871, it became a subpost of Fort Griffin (near Albany, Texas) during the Indian campaigns. Other forts in the frontier fort system, besides these two, were Forts Concho, Belknap, Chadbourne, Stockton, Davis, Bliss, McKavett, Clark, McIntosh, Inge, and Richardson in Texas, and Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Some "subposts or intermediate stations" include Bothwick's Station on Salt Creek between Fort Richardson and Fort Belknap, Camp Wichita near Buffalo Springs between Fort Richardson and Red River Station, and Mountain Pass between Fort Concho and Fort Griffin.

Subsequent use

After 1875, a town grew up around the ruins of Fort Phantom Hill. The location functioned first as a buying and shipping point for buffalo hides and eventually as a town of more than 500 residents. Census records in 1880 show more than 546 people living at the fort, which had a hotel and the staples of most West Texas towns.

Fort Phantom Hill also served briefly as the Jones County seat, although residents later moved it to the community of Anson. By the 1890s, Fort Phantom Hill was largely abandoned.

Preservation

The Fort Phantom Hill property has been owned by the family of Abilene resident John Guitar since he purchased it in 1928. Mr. Guitar's grandson, Jim Alexander of Abilene, purchased the property in 1969. In 1997, Mr. Alexander deeded the property to the Fort Phantom Foundation to help assure its long-term preservation and to make it more accessible to the public.

Today, Fort Phantom Hill is one of the most pristine historic sites in Texas. Besides the stone chimneys, other remnants of the developed fort remain for visitors to explore at the site. These include an intact stone powder magazine, a stone guardhouse, and an almost-intact commissary or warehouse.

See also

*National Register of Historic Places listings in Jones County, Texas
*Texas Forts Trail
*Forts of Texas

References

Sources

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Books and articles

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Texas State Historical Association

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External links

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Reservoirs in Texas
Phantom Hill
Protected areas of Jones County, Texas
Phantom Hill
Butterfield Overland Mail in Texas
Texas in the American Civil War
Buildings and structures in Jones County, Texas
Landforms of Jones County, Texas
National Register of Historic Places in Jones County, Texas
Stagecoach stops in the United States