Fort Inge was a frontier fort in

Uvalde County, Texas Uvalde County ( ) is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 24,564. Its county seat is Uvalde. The county was created in 1850 and organized in 1856. It is named for Juan de Ugalde, the Spanish gov ...

, United States.

History

Established as Camp Leona on March 13, 1849, Fort Inge was garrisoned intermittently until March 19, 1869. The fort served as a base for

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

troops assigned to protect the southern overland mail route along the San Antonio-El Paso Road from Indian raids. The camp was renamed Fort Inge in honor of Lieutenant Zebulon M. P. Inge, a

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

officer killed in the

Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Second Federal Republic of Mexico, Mexico f ...

. Other forts in the frontier fort system were Forts

Griffin The griffin, griffon, or gryphon (Ancient Greek: , ''gryps''; Classical Latin: ''grȳps'' or ''grȳpus''; Late Latin, Late and Medieval Latin: ''gryphes'', ''grypho'' etc.; Old French: ''griffon'') is a legendary creature with the body, tail ...

, Concho, Belknap,

Chadbourne Chadbourne, Chadbourn, Chadburn, Chadburne, or Chatburn may refer to: People *Chet Chadbourne (1884–1943), American major league baseball player *Eugene Chadbourne (born 1954), American guitarist and banjoist *Glenn Chadbourne (born 1959), Ameri ...

Stockton Stockton may refer to: Places Australia * Stockton, New South Wales * Stockton, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region New Zealand *Stockton, New Zealand United Kingdom *Stockton, Cheshire *Stockton, Norfolk *Stockton, Chirbu ...

Davis Davis may refer to: Places Antarctica * Mount Davis (Antarctica) * Davis Island (Palmer Archipelago) * Davis Valley, Queen Elizabeth Land Canada * Davis, Saskatchewan, an unincorporated community * Davis Strait, between Nunavut and Green ...

Bliss BLISS is a system programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) by W. A. Wulf, D. B. Russell, and A. N. Habermann around 1970. It was perhaps the best known system language until C debuted a few years later. Since then, C bec ...

, Mason, McKavett,

Clark Clark is an English language surname, ultimately derived from the Latin with historical links to England, Scotland, and Ireland ''clericus'' meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educat ...

, McIntosh,

Richardson Richardson may refer to: People * Richardson (surname), an English and Scottish surname * Richardson Gang, a London crime gang in the 1960s * Richardson Dilworth, Mayor of Philadelphia (1956-1962) Places Australia *Richardson, Australian Capi ...

, and Phantom Hill in Texas, and

Sill Sill may refer to: * Sill (dock), a weir at the low water mark retaining water within a dock * Sill (geology), a subhorizontal sheet intrusion of molten or solidified magma * Sill (geostatistics) * Sill (river), a river in Austria * Sill plate, a ...

in Oklahoma.Carter, R.G., On the Border with Mackenzie, 1935, Washington, DC: Enyon Printing Co. Also in the system were "subposts or intermediate stations", including 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. Two wooden

barracks Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are ...

with thatched roofs quartered the

soldier A soldier is a person who is a member of an army. A soldier can be a conscripted or volunteer enlisted person, a non-commissioned officer, or an officer. Etymology The word ''soldier'' derives from the Middle English word , from Old French ...

s assigned to the fort. Also, a large

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms wh ...

building served as

commissary A commissary is a government official charged with oversight or an ecclesiastical official who exercises in special circumstances the jurisdiction of a bishop. In many countries, the term is used as an administrative or police title. It often c ...

and later a hospital. The buildings at Ft. Inge were never sufficient for the troops stationed there, probably because this post was never determined by the Army to be a permanent post. It was started in 1849, but abandoned in the spring of 1851. It was reoccupied that same summer and occupied until 1855, when it was abandoned again. It was reoccupied a third time in 1856, but was abandoned in 1861 to

Confederate States Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...

troops.Herbert M. Hart, ''Old Forts of the Southwest'', Superior Publishing Company, Seattle, Washington, 1964, First Edition It was again garrisoned briefly in 1865 by the 4th Wisconsin Cavalry. The

regarrisoned the fort until March 19, 1869, when the garrison was transferred to Fort McKavett. The army recovered materials from the site to use for additions to nearby Fort Clark. Fort Inge then was used as a camp by the Texas Rangers until 1884. The fort was surrounded on three sides by a stacked stone wall added around the time of the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polic ...

. The wall was dismantled in 1874, and the stone was used to build a dam on the Leona River. The wall was relaid along its original lines in 1984. Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte II was posted to Fort Inge in the early 1850s, and his letters from there are preserved by the

Maryland Historical Society The Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC), formerly the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS), . founded on March 1, 1844, is the oldest cultural institution in the U.S. state of Maryland. The organization "collects, preserves, and inte ...

Major Neighbors

Robert Neighbors Robert Simpson Neighbors (November 3, 1815 – September 14, 1859) was an Indian agent and Texas state legislator. Known as a fair and determined protector of Indian interests as guaranteed by treaty, he was murdered for his beliefs by a Texan ...

arrived at the fort on 7 April 1854, investigating Indian depredations, and found the raiding party consisted of 12

Tonkawa The Tonkawa are a Native American tribe indigenous to present-day Oklahoma. Their Tonkawa language, now extinct, is a linguistic isolate. Today, Tonkawa people are enrolled in the federally recognized Tonkawa Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. ...

s, two of whom were killed and nine turned over to the fort.Neighbours, K.F., 1975, ''Robert Neighbors and the Texas Frontier, 1836-1859'', Waco: Texian Press Neighbors also freed the Lipan Chief Chiquito and his men from the guard house, and charged Indian Agent Howard with "dereliction of duty" for their false arrest and mismanagement of the Indian situation.

Park

In 1961, the site became the Fort Inge Historical Site County Park. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artist ...

on September 12, 1985.Staff Writer.
Fort Inge Archeological Site
" ''

.'' Accessed April 17, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-17. The site is located on the Leona River, and is dominated by the 140-ft-high (43 m) remains of an extinct volcano named Mount Inge.

Gallery

File:Fort Inge 5.png, Fort Inge File:Fort Inge 4A.png, Fort Inge File:Fort Inge 3.png, Trousset's 1867 drawing File:Fort Inge.png, Eastman's 1849 drawing

References

External links