Frontier Crossroads: Fort Davis and the West

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE The military frontier at Fort Davis had come to an end. For thirtytwo of the past thirty-seven years, the post’s garrison had protected non-Indians across much of the Trans-Pecos region of Texas. The army had driven the Indians who had once occupied the area south into Mexico, where scattered remnants were gradually assimilated into the general population, or west into New Mexico, where they now eked out a meager existence on a federal reservation. And, as was the case across much of the American West, the army had also engaged in activities that subsequent generations would later call “nation building.” Soldiers had explored the region, built most of the structures that composed the fort itself, strung telegraph wire, and laid out and improved roads. Their presence had also provided enough physical security—or at least the appearance of security —against Indian attacks to allow ranchers to take advantage of the area’s rich pastoral opportunities. Further, the garrison generated a demand for services that attracted an array of entrepreneurs and job seekers to the Davis Mountains. The soldiers, and the civilians who had followed them, represented a diverse cross section of nineteenth-century American society. The West Point graduates who dominated the officer corps often came from middleto upper-class backgrounds; noncommissioned personnel, on the other hand, typically came from the ranks of immigrants and blacks, whose opportunities had been much more limited. Civilians drawn to the post on the Limpia included larger-than-expected numbers of European and Mexican immigrants . Rather than the monolithic society often depicted by casual portraits of the nineteenth-century American frontier, the resulting community was multiracial and multiethnic. Although racial and ethnic boundaries were evident, they were hardly rigid, somewhat tempered by shared demands for limited resources. The frontier community’s dependence upon the federal government seems ironic in light of the myths that frequently cloud popular understanding of America’s past. The West, our stereotypes sometimes suggest, was built by rugged individualists seeking opportunities free of the established practices and structures that had limited them back east. The entrepreneurs who came to Fort Davis to make their fortunes, whether from Mexico, Europe, or the United States, certainly braved great dangers and sought to capitalize on the chance to begin anew. But they did so knowing that federal dollars would flow into the Fort Davis economy, providing the capital and profits necessary for them to have a fighting chance of recognizing their dreams. Moreover, they did so in the shadow of the U.S. Army, that oft-maligned but highly useful institution of federal interest, security, and empire. Fortunately, Fort Davis did not die with the army’s departure. The population, which had grown to some 800 civilians by the late 1880s, fell to 554 by 1920, but then began to stabilize—and then to slowly rebound—as cattle, automobiles, tourism, and a concerted effort by local boosters once again attracted interest in the Davis Mountains region. A brief dalliance with the movie industry in the late 1920s and early 1930s proved a bust, but the New Deal brought a more permanent and profitable suitor in the form of an old friend: the government. The state built a “Scenic Loop” highway through the beautiful surrounding mountains, and the federal Civilian Conservation Corps erected Indian Lodge at the Davis Mountains State Park. The McDonald Observatory, constructed under the aegis of the Lone Star State’s largest public institution of higher learning and dedicated in 1939, kindled additional interest in the region. The crowning glory came in 1961, when Congress passed legislation authorizing creation of the Fort Davis National Historic Site, thus paving the way for the restoration and reconstruction of the abandoned military post. The federal government’s return marked the completion of the circle begun in 1854 with the arrival of the Eighth Infantry Regiment. Modern Fort Davis remains a crossroads, albeit of a somewhat different kind than was the case during the nineteenth century. Located between the region’s major thoroughfares—Interstate Highway 10 to the north and U.S. Highway 90 to the south—the community no longer serves virtually every east-west traveler through the Trans-Pecos. But as the “highest town in Texas,” it remains anoasisforthoseluckyenoughtoknowitscharms.Tourists,hunters,campers, EPILOGUE 141 and those seeking an escape from the blazing Texas heat mingle with permanent residents, who continue to hold jobs...