Pecos County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 15,193. The county seat is Fort Stockton. The county was created in 1871 and organized in 1875. It is named for the Pecos River. It is one of the nine counties that comprise the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas.
Brewster County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. It is in West Texas and its county seat is Alpine. It is one of the nine counties that comprise the Trans-Pecos region, and borders Mexico. Brewster County is the largest county by area in the state - at 6,192 square miles (16,040 km2) it is over three times the size of the state of Delaware, and more than 500 square miles (1,300 km2) bigger than Connecticut.
Fort Stockton is a city in and the county seat of Pecos County, Texas, United States. It is located on Interstate 10, future Interstate 14, U.S. Highways 67, 285, and 385, and the Santa Fe Railroad, 329 mi (529 km) northwest of San Antonio and 240 mi (390 km) southeast of El Paso. Its population was 8,466 at the 2020 census.
Charles Goodnight, also known as Charlie Goodnight, was a rancher in the American West. In 1955, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
The Llano Estacado, sometimes translated into English as the Staked Plains, is a region in the Southwestern United States that encompasses parts of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas. One of the largest mesas or tablelands on the North American continent, the elevation rises from 3,000 feet (900 m) in the southeast to over 5,000 feet (1,500 m) in the northwest, sloping almost uniformly at about 10 feet per mile (2 m/km).
The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century route through central North America that connected Franklin, Missouri, with Santa Fe, New Mexico. Pioneered in 1821 by William Becknell, who departed from the Boonslick region along the Missouri River, the trail served as a vital commercial highway until 1880, when the railroad arrived in Santa Fe. Santa Fe was near the end of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro which carried trade from Mexico City. The trail was later incorporated into parts of the National Old Trails Road and U.S. Route 66.
The Cimarron River extends 698 miles (1,123 km) across New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas. The headwaters flow from Johnson Mesa west of Folsom in northeastern New Mexico. Much of the river's length lies in Oklahoma, where it either borders or passes through eleven counties. There are no major cities along its route. The river enters the Oklahoma Panhandle near Kenton, Oklahoma, crosses the corner of southeastern Colorado into Kansas, reenters the Oklahoma Panhandle, reenters Kansas, and finally returns to Oklahoma where it joins the Arkansas River at Keystone Reservoir west of Tulsa, Oklahoma, its only impoundment. The Cimarron drains a basin that encompasses about 18,927 square miles (49,020 km2).
Fort Griffin, now a Texas state historic site as Fort Griffin State Historic Site, was a US Cavalry fort established 31 July 1867 by four companies of the Sixth Cavalry, U.S. Army under the command of Lt. Col. S. D. Sturgis, in the western part of North Texas, specifically northwestern Shackelford County, to give settlers protection from early Comanche and Kiowa raids. Originally called Camp Wilson after Henry Hamilton Wilson, a recently deceased lieutenant and son of Republican senator and later vice president, Henry Wilson, it was later named for Charles Griffin, a former Civil War Union general who had commanded, as de facto military governor, the Department of Texas during the early years of Reconstruction.
Fort Richardson was a United States Army installation located in present-day Jacksboro, Texas. Named in honor of Union General Israel B. Richardson, who died in the Battle of Antietam during the American Civil War, it was active from 1867 to 1878. Today, the site, with a few surviving buildings, is called Fort Richardson State Park, Historic Site and Lost Creek Reservoir State Trailway. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963 for its role in securing the state's northern frontier in the post-Civil War era.
The Battle of Stone Houses was a skirmish between Texas Rangers and a band of Kichai Indians which took place on November 10, 1837. The skirmish, which took place ten miles south of what is now Windthorst, Texas, was named for three stone mounds near the battlefield which appeared to the Indians to be small houses.
Fort Phantom Hill, also called the Camp on the Clear Fork, is a former United States Army installation located in Jones County, Texas. The fort was established in 1851 as part of a line of forts in Texas to protect migrants passing through the state on their way to California. The US Army abandoned the fort in 1854 and it was shortly thereafter mostly destroyed by fire. In 1858, it became a station of the Butterfield-Overland Mail route until it moved out of Texas with the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861. During the war, the fort was occupied by Confederate frontier troops until the Confederacy's defeat and surrender. Following the US Army's return to Texas after the Civil War, Fort Phantom Hill was used as a subpost of the larger, newer Fort Griffin until 1875.
Horsehead Crossing is a ford on the Pecos River in Crane County, south of Odessa, Texas. Historically, it was a major landmark on the trail west as one of a few fordable sections of the Pecos in West Texas, and as the first reliable source of water for about 75 miles on the route from the east.
The San Antonio–El Paso Road, also known as the Lower Emigrant Road or Military Road, was an economically important trade route between the Texas cities of San Antonio and El Paso between 1849 and 1882. Mail, freight, and passengers traveled by horse and wagon along this road across the Edwards Plateau and dangerous Trans-Pecos region of West Texas.
In Texas, the Butterfield Overland Mail service created by Congress on March 3, 1857, was operated until March 30, 1861.
Milton Faver was a pioneering cattle rancher in Presidio County, Texas, the preeminent cattle baron of the Big Bend in the nineteenth century, and one of the most important individual contributors to Big Bend history. Also known in his time by the honorary title, don Melitón, he founded Cibolo Creek Ranch halfway between Marfa and Presidio, Texas in 1857. He was one of the earliest Texas trail drivers, driving his cattle to market in New Orleans in the 1850s and to other markets later. Although his birthplace is not known with certainty, he was most likely born and raised in Missouri around 1822. Local lore contends that, while in his teens, he fought a duel and fled south, believing he had killed his opponent.
This is a compendium of information on springs in Travis County, Texas, especially those with prehistoric or historic links to Texas Native Americans. Information is based primarily on Gunnar Brune's report to the Texas Water Development Board, "Major and Historical Springs of Texas", and his book, Springs of Texas. Additional sources are cited with associated springs.
The Fort Stockton Historic District, in Fort Stockton, Texas, is a 75 acres (30 ha) historic district which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 2, 1973.
Comanche Springs was an aquifer of six artesian springs geographically located between the Edwards Plateau and the Trans-Pecos regions of West Texas. The military fortification Camp Stockton was built around the springs, eventually growing become the city of Fort Stockton.
Pope's Crossing was a ford on the Pecos River located one mile south of the New Mexico–Texas border on the modern Loving–Reeves county line. Discovered by members of an 1855 expedition tasked with drilling artesian wells east of the Pecos led by U.S. Army topographical engineer John Pope, the ford quickly became the primary crossing of the river on the "upper" military or emigrant road between San Antonio and the ford on the Rio Grande opposite the Mexican town of El Paso del Norte. Heavily used by emigrants, soldiers, traders, and freighters eager to avoid the more difficult and unpredictable crossings further south, Pope's Crossing became a well-traveled part of the network of transcontinental wagon roads that developed across Texas in the 1850s to facilitate settlement and commerce in the southwestern lands recently acquired as a result of the Mexican–American War.
Blockhouse on Signal Mountain is within the Fort Sill Military Reservation, north of Lawton, Oklahoma. The rock architecture is located along Mackenzie Hill Road within the Fort Sill West Range being the Oklahoma administrative division of Comanche County.
