Fort Lancaster: Texas Frontier Sentinel
By Lawrence John Francell. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1999. 70 pp., $7.95 softcover.

Lt Col Harold E. Raugh, Jr., United States Army (Retd) reviews these books exclusively for DJ.

Fort Lancaster, Texas, was one of the least known and most isolated frontier Army posts. Its relatively short history is a saga of ordinary soldiers doing their duty in an era of westward expansion when military discipline was as harsh as the desert environment.
Camp Lancaster was established by two rifle companies of the 1st Infantry Regiment on 20 August 1855 at Live Oak Creek, west Texas. The end of the Mexican War, the discovery of gold in California in 1848, and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase necessitated transportation routes to these new southwestern areas. Camp Lancaster was built to serve as the latest link in a chain of forts protecting the southern overland route from west Texas to California.
The first chapter of this interesting study provides a contextual overview of the organization, composition, missions, personnel, and equipment of the US Army between the Mexican War and the Civil War. Early west Texas exploration expeditions, route and railroad survey parties, and the experiment to use camels as desert transport animals are chronicled in the second chapter. The establishment of Camp Lancaster in 1855, near the junction of the “Lower Road” and the Pecos River, is described next. Detailed information on the construction, types, and uses of various installation buildings, including early attempts at prefabrication, is included, as are the activities of the garrison. When the encampment was designated a permanent fort in 1856, stone and adobe buildings replaced the temporary structures. In February 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, Ft. Lancaster and others in the area were abandoned.
Author Lawrence John Francell, a museum services consultant who lives in nearby Ft. Davis, Texas, has synthesized extracts from explorers’ journals, contemporary correspondence, and Army inspector general reports in writing this illuminating history. This superb 70-page monograph (including a dozen illustrations and two difficult-to-read maps, plus endnotes and bibliography) can be read at one sitting. The ruins of Ft. Lancaster can be found today south of Interstate 10 just east of Sheffield, Texas.
Throughout its short existence, Ft. Lancaster had difficulties patrolling the Lower Road and escorting travellers because its soldiers were dismounted — foot-mobile — infantrymen. In 1855, the post surgeon referred to this problem: “what can they do without horses against these Arabs of the American desert? As well might dragoons be used as marines on the deck of the frigate.” This excellent study highlights and pays tribute to those stalwart soldiers who served their country during a crucial period of westward expansion, and to the fort that serves as an example of the pre-Civil War frontier post.