This interpretive sign stands in front of the ruins of the Lime Kiln at the Fort Lancaster state historic site outside of Sheffield, Texas.
The sign reads as follows:
"LIME KILN
Soldiers burned limestone in the kiln to create quicklime, and ingredient in the mortar, stucco, and whitewash used in the construction of the post buildings. A large amount of wood, which was a scarce resource, was needed to fuel the kiln. They gathered the wood needed for the kiln, the kitchens, and the bakery from as far as 6 miles away.
Step 1
Loading and initial firing from below
Step 2
Lime begins to fall
Step 3
Raking and removal of the lime"
More on Fort Lancaster can be found here: (
visit link)
"FORT LANCASTER. Fort Lancaster was on the left bank of Live Oak Creek above its confluence with the Pecos River. It is now a state historic site off old U.S. Highway 290 ten miles east of Sheffield in Crockett County. The post was established as Camp Lancaster on August 20, 1855, by Capt. Stephen D. Carpenter and manned by companies H and K of the First United States Infantry. Camp Lancaster became Fort Lancaster on August 21, 1856. Carpenter was succeeded in command by Capt. R. S. Granger, who served from February 1856 to March 31, 1858. Carpenter resumed command after March 31 and was succeeded again by Granger in January 1859.
Granger commanded until the removal of federal troops in March 1861 after the secession of Texas from the Union. During the Civil War the post was occupied from December 1861 to April 1862 by Walter P. Lane's rangers, who became a part of Company F, Second Regiment, of the Texas Mounted Rifles. After the war the fort was reoccupied in 1871 as a subpost by a company of infantry and a detachment of cavalry. Personnel changed monthly. The post was apparently abandoned in 1873 or 1874 and much of its masonry was used for buildings in Sheffield.
Fort Lancaster protected the lower road from San Antonio to El Paso in the years following the discovery of gold in California. The duties of the men stationed at Fort Lancaster were to escort mail and freight trains, pursue Mescalero Apaches and Comanches, and patrol their segment of road to keep track of Indian movements. The post was originally constructed of picket canvas and portable Turnley prefabricated buildings. By the time it was abandoned all its major structures were made of stone or adobe. The Butterfield Overland Mail changed its route west from the upper road between San Antonio and El Paso to the lower road in August 1859. Mail on the lower road had previously been contracted to George H. Giddings and John Birch. Three coaches per month passed over the road. In June of 1860 Lt. William E. Echols and his "camel corps" visited the fort (see CAMELS).
The site of Fort Lancaster was deeded to Crockett County in 1965 and donated to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in 1968. Archeological exploration had been begun two years earlier by T. R. Hays and Edward B. Jelks; their project involved excavating one barracks and three latrines and testing two other barracks and two commissary structures. Three structures-an officers' quarters, the commissary, and the hospital kitchen-and the flagpole location were entirely excavated in 1971 by John W. Clark. Dessamae Lorraine did additional mapping of the site and work on the flagpole site shortly after Clark's excavation. In 1974 Wayne Roberson excavated two enlisted men's barracks and two officers' quarters. The excavations produced large numbers of artifacts and a great deal of architectural information for interpreting the site. Much of this material is presented at the visitors' center at Fort Lancaster State Historic Site and in state archeological reports. Because of a budget shortfall the state yielded management of the site to Texas Rural Communities, Incorporated, in 1993. Effective January 1, 2008, operational control of Fort Lancaster State Historic Site transferred to the Texas Historical Commission.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Art Black, Fort Lancaster State Historic Site, Crockett County, Texas: Archeological Investigations (Archeological Report 8 [Austin: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Parks Division, Historic Sites and Restoration Branch, 1975?]). John W. Clark, Jr., Archeological Investigations at Fort Lancaster State Historic Site, Crockett County, Texas (Texas Archeological Salvage Project Research Report 12 [Austin: University of Texas, 1972]). John W. Clark, Jr., "The `Digs' at Fort Lancaster, Texas, 1966 and 1971," Military History of Texas and the Southwest 12 (1974). T. R. Hays and Edward B. Jelks, Archeological Exploration at Fort Lancaster, 1966 (Austin: State Building Commission, 1966). University of Texas School of Architecture, Texas Historic Forts: Architectural Research (5 vols., Austin: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, 1968)."
and here: (
visit link)
"CAMELS. In 1836 Maj. George H. Crosman urged the United States War Department to use camels in Indian campaigns in Florida because of the animals' ability to keep on the move with a minimum of food and water. The matter came to the attention of Senator Jefferson Davis, whom President Franklin Pierce later appointed secretary of war. Davis's first problem was that of coping with Indians and with transportation in Texas, but the enormous expense of the Mexican Cession of 1848 had seriously depleted available army resources. Davis firmly accepted the currently prevalent "Great American Desert" thesis, which held that much of the western United States was virtually uninhabitable. He urged Congress to appropriate money to test the value and efficiency of camels in the Southwest as a partial solution to pressing needs.
At the insistence of the War Department, Congress passed, on March 3, 1855, the Shield amendment to the appropriation bill, which made $30,000 available "under the direction of the War Department in the purchase of camels and the importation of dromedaries, to be employed for military purposes."
On May 10, 1855, Maj. H. C. Wayne received the special presidential assignment. The naval storeship Supply, in command of Lt. D. D. Porter, was placed at Wayne's disposal. Wayne traveled ahead to study continental use of camels. After trafficking down the North African coast and spending $12,000 for desirable beasts, he returned with thirty-three camels, three Arabs, and two Turks. Thirty-two of the camels, plus one calf born at sea, arrived at Indianola, Texas, on April 29, 1856, but because of bad weather and shallow water were not unloaded until May 13. On June 4 Wayne started his caravan westward. They stopped near Victoria, where the animals were clipped and Mrs. Mary A. Shirkey spun and knit for the president of the United States a pair of camel-pile socks.
The animals were finally located at Camp Verde, where several successful experiments were made to test the camels' utility in the pursuit of Indians and the transportation of burdens. Wayne reported that camels rose and walked with as much as 600 pounds without difficulty, traveled miles without water, and ate almost any kind of plant. One camel trek was made to the unexplored Big Bend.
The first camel importation was followed by a second, consisting of forty-one beasts, which were also quartered at Camp Verde. In the spring of 1857 James Buchanan's secretary of war, John B. Floyd, directed Edward Fitzgerald Beale to use twenty-five of the camels in his survey for a wagon road from Fort Defiance, New Mexico, across the thirty-fifth parallel to the Colorado River.
After this survey, the drive continued to Fort Tejon, California, where the camels were used to transport supplies and dispatches across the desert for the army. Eventually some of the animals were turned loose, some were used in salt pack-trains, and others even saw Texas again after Bethel Coopwood, Confederate spy and Texas lawyer, captured fourteen from Union forces. During the Civil War eighty camels and two Egyptian drivers passed into Confederate hands. The camels soon were widely scattered; some were turned out on the open range near Camp Verde; some were used to pack cotton bales to Brownsville; and one found its way to the infantry command of Capt. Sterling Price, who used it throughout the war to carry the whole company's baggage. In 1866 the federal government sold the camels at auction; sixty-six of them went to Coopwood. Some of the camels in California were sold at auction in 1863, and others escaped to roam the desert.
The failure of the camel in the United States was not due to its capability; every test showed it to be a superior transport animal. It was instead the nature of the beasts which led to their demise-they smelled horrible, frightened horses, and were detested by handlers accustomed to the more docile mules. Two private importations of camels followed the government experiment. On October 16, 1858, Mrs. M. J. Watson reported to Galveston port authorities that her ship had eighty-nine camels aboard, and claimed that she wanted to test them for purposes of transport.
One port official, however, felt that she was using the camels to mask the odor typically associated with a slave ship and refused her petition to unload the cargo. After two months in port, Mrs. Watson sailed for the slave markets in Cuba after dumping the camels ashore in Galveston, where they wandered about the city and died from neglect and slaughter around the coastal sand dunes. A second civilian shipment of a dozen camels arrived at Port Lavaca in 1859, where it met a similar fate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Chris Emmett, Texas Camel Tales (San Antonio: Naylor, 1932). Odie B. Faulk, The U.S. Camel Corps: An Army Experiment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
Chris Emmett and Odie B. Faulk"