Fort Phantom Hill: Great photos of the fort of the old frontier in Texas

Stones and old chimneys are mostly what remain of Fort Phantom Hill in western Texas - License our images here.

We didn't found phantoms in the old ruins of this old Texan fort from 1851. We just met a grasshopper that you will see later. Nobody else on this historic hill. 

Captain Randolph B. Marcy suggested the construction of these forts to protect the trails to California from the warlike Comanche - also known as the "Lords of the Plains". 

These were one of the most feared American Indians in the West. Actually, I read that the word "Comanche" comes from a Ute word meaning "anyone who wants to fight me all the time". 

Ruins of a room in one of the chimneys, the gunpowder magazine, guardhouse/jail, and the big warehouse of Fort Phantom Hill.

Fort Phantom Hill began as the "Post on the Clear Fork of the Brazos". It was built on a terrible spot. There was no timber nearby, neither good water sources. 

A quartermaster of Fort Phantom Hill wrote to his wife who lived at Fort Washita, Oklahoma: 

... God ever intended white man to occupy such a barren waste.

More chimneys from Fort Phantom Hill. 

War never came to Fort Phantom Hill. American soldiers met Comanches, Wichitas, Kiowas, and Kickapoos in friendly terms in this place. The fort was abandoned in 1853 and soon later a fire destroyed the wood of the buildings. 

Fort Phantom Hill was reborn multiple times. It served as mail station, outpost of the Texas Rangers during the Civil War, and even housed a town of over five hundred - it included a hotel. 

Some say that General Sherman overnighted here once, but he didn't mention this in his memoirs.  

 

Grasshopper guarding a Prairie Schooner in Fort Phantom Hill.

This icon of the conquest of the West still survives on the fields of Fort Phantom Hill. Only the white cover is missing from the legendary Prairie Schooner.

Prairie Schooner pulling a smaller wagon.

There is a watercolor painting from 1853 showing Fort Phantom Hill in this page. 

And talking of art, the poet-ranchman of Texas William Lawrence Chittenden wrote in 1893 "Old Fort Phantom Hill" depicting Union and Confederate soldiers united at the fort. 

And the vanished soldiers gather 'round the heights of Phantom Hill.

Then pale bivouac fires are lighted and those gloomy chimneys glow,

While the grizzled veterans muster from the taps of long ago,

Lee and Johnston and McKenzie, Grant and Jackson, Custer, too,

Gather there in peaceful silence waiting for their last review;

Blue and gray at length united on the high redoubts of fame,

Soldiers all in one grand army, that will answer in God's name.

(The whole poem here.)

Beautiful verses. A united country is vital for survival. Otherwise, we all may end like Fort Phantom Hill. 

Check a video from our visit.