This Brown Park service sign next to some trail rights preserve the name, route, and existence of the San Antonio - El Paso Road that passed through Fort Davis when this area was the Texas frontier.
From the Texas Beyond History website: (
visit link)
"Fort Davis and the Trans-Pecos Trails
Much of the history of the Trans-Pecos region of southwestern Texas has been of peoples on their way to some place else. The Spanish mostly went around it. Comanche and Kiowa raiders rode through it from the north on their way to Mexico. Anglo-Americans came from the east, headed for the California gold fields and western cattle markets. In time, the travelers and their trails drew the attention of the United States Army.
Prehistoric peoples lived and traded along the middle Rio Grande—named El Rio del Norte by the Spanish—for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. In 1535, the wandering Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca found Jumano and other native groups farming the land at the junction of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos—la junta de los rios—opposite the site of modern Presidio, Texas.
Two Spanish exploratory expeditions in the early 1580s came down the Conchos, passed through la junta, turned northwest, and followed the Norte toward its upper reaches. In 1598, Juan de Oñate was authorized to settle the lands within the modern boundaries of New Mexico. He traveled over the Chihuahuan plateau to reach the Rio Grande some 150 miles upstream from la junta, and memorialized his crossing of the river as El Paso del Rio del Norte. He then followed the river to the pueblos of the north, where he settled his colonists and established the town of Santa Fe.
Oñate found the Puebloans trading with Plains Indians who brought buffalo robes to exchange for corn and other agricultural products. The outlanders—the Spanish called them vaqueros because of their trade in "cow" hides—were the Plains Apache. The center of this trade was the Pecos Pueblo, across the mountains to the east of Santa Fe and near the headwaters of the Pecos River.
The province of Nuevo Mexico grew steadily, if somewhat slowly, but the harshness of a succession of Spanish governors led to an Indian revolt in 1680. The Spaniards withdrew to the south and took refuge near Oñate's crossing of the Rio Grande. Their northward advance stymied, the Spanish began to dig in along the middle stretch of the river and to establish missions at the Paso del Norte and la junta. These missions remained after the Spanish returned to Santa Fe. In 1760, the Spanish would establish Presidio de la junta de los Rios Norte y los Conchos—known more simply in later years as Presidio del Norte—to protect the missions at the junction of the Rio Grande and Rio Conchos.
The missionary efforts at la junta were plagued by Spanish slavers who captured local Indians and carried them south to work in the silver mines. Apaches who visited the Puebloans of New Mexico likewise were periodically abducted by the Spanish and transported to the interior of Mexico. When Comanches began to intrude on the Apache range in the early 1700s, they attacked the pueblos and the nearby New Mexican settlements. In desperation, the Spanish government in 1786 made an alliance with the Comanches in which they combined to make war against the Apaches. In addition to other terms, the Spanish New Mexicans offered the Comanches a horse and bridle and two knives for each Apache captive brought to Santa Fe.
Throughout the remainder of the Spanish colonial period and 25-year interval of Mexican rule, the settlers of New Mexico were able to maintain relatively peaceful trade relations with the Comanche. But that peace was maintained at a tremendous cost that was paid by settlers in the northern Mexico provinces of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, and Zacatecas. As the Apache lost control of the Plains and scattered into the mountains of Mexico and the Trans-Pecos, the Comanche began to raid the Mexican settlements south of the Rio Grande. Captive Mexicans would be carried north, and some would be brought to the New Mexico settlements to be ransomed.
The Comanche Trail from the High Plains into Mexico—sometimes called the "Comanche War Trail" or the "Comanche Trace"—is shrouded in legend and mystery. It appears not to have been one trail, but several that converged somewhere on the Plains or in the Trans-Pecos, passed by the prodigious springs at the present city of Fort Stockton, and diverged again to cross the Rio Grande at multiple points. Raiders following the upriver, or western, trails could strike at Chihuahua and Durango; those following the eastern branches could attack Coahuila and Zacatecas.
The Mexicans' successful revolution against Spanish rule opened a new era of international trade along the famous Santa Fe Trail, which ran from Independence, Missouri, into northern New Mexico. From Santa Fe, the trade extended south through the Paso del Norte, and on to Chihuahua City. When the United States and Mexico went to war in 1846, one of the U.S. Army's invasion routes into Mexico followed the Santa Fe-Chihuahua Trail.
After three years of war, the United States in 1848 obtained the land west of the new state of Texas—the territory comprising the modern states of New Mexico, Arizona, and California. As word of discovery of gold in California began to reach the east, exploratory expeditions and immigrant parties began to enter the Trans-Pecos in search of a viable route to the Pacific. Texas rangers John C. Hays and Samuel Highsmith attempted to map such a road, but became hopelessly lost. They probably were saved only by fortuitously stumbling upon a trading post known as Fort Leaton.
Chihuahua Trail freighter Ben Leaton had purchased property near la junta in 1848. He expanded upon existing structures to establish a home, trading post, and private fort. The Hays-Highsmith party recuperated at Leaton's place for 10 days before leaving for San Antonio, which they reached in December, 1848, and where they reported that they had found a practicable wagon route from San Antonio to the Presidio del Norte.
Within two months after the return of the Hays-Highsmith party, U.S. Army lieutenants W.H.C. Whiting and William F. Smith departed San Antonio with orders to try to find a viable route west, using the dubious Hays-Highsmith experience to reach the Rio Grande at Presidio del Norte. The expedition first headed northwest, passing through the German settlement at Fredericksburg before reaching the San Saba River. It followed the San Saba to its headwaters, then headed west beyond the Pecos River and south to Fort Leaton.
The Whiting-Smith party followed the Rio Grande northwest to the Paso del Norte, but decided to return on a more direct route that bypassed Fort Leaton and reached San Antonio by way of the Devil's River, Las Moras Springs, the Nueces River, and the Alsatian village of Castroville. Fort Leaton, believed to be the largest adobe structure in Texas, would eventually fade into obscurity. Ben Leaton died in 1851, but not before Mexican authorities accused him of selling guns to Comanches in return for stolen horses.
By mid-1849, the army had plotted the wagon road that became known variously as the "government," "lower," or "southern" road west from San Antonio. In September, Captain Jefferson Van Horne and four companies of the 3rd Infantry traveled through the Trans-Pecos and established a camp at the ranch of Benjamin Franklin Coons, across the river from the Mexican town that had become known, simply, as "El Paso." The army's post would be abandoned, relocated, and ultimately named Fort Bliss. The Anglo town that grew up across the river from Mexican El Paso would be known as "Franklin."
In the meantime, the army's and the public's desire for means of transcontinental communication and commerce was recognized by Henry Skillman, a veteran trader on the Santa Fe-Chihuahua Trail. In 1851 he was awarded a contract for U.S. mail service from San Antonio to Santa Fe via Franklin. By December, Skillman was offering passenger service.
Skillman formed a partnership with George Giddings in 1854, and the two attempted to put the operation on a stronger financial footing. But the business would always be endangered by Lipan Apaches on the eastern end of the route, Mescalero Apaches in the mountains of the far western Trans-Pecos, and Comanches and Kiowas in between. In less than two years, the Giddings-Skillman operation lost more than $54,000 worth of livestock, wagons, and buildings to Indian attacks.
Two U. S. Army posts guarded the gateways from the interior of Texas into the Trans-Pecos. Fort McKavett, near the headwaters of the San Saba River, protected the "upper" road through Fredericksburg . Fort Clark, near the Rio Grande, protected the "lower" road through Castroville. But a similar military presence was needed farther west, and in 1854 the army established a post near Limpia Creek in the mountains of the Trans-Pecos. It was named Fort Davis, after United States secretary of war Jefferson Davis. The following year, Fort Lancaster was established on Live Oak Creek near its confluence with the Pecos River."