Fort Lancaster -- SH 290 near Sheffield TX - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

When the WPA writers visited desolate and lonely Fort Lancaster in the late 1930s, the ruins were a pile of bricks on private land. These ruins were protected by the landowners, who sold the site to the State of Texas in 1966 to create the Fort Lancaster State Historic Site.

The waymark coordinates are for the Ruins of Fort Lancaster historic marker in the site.

From Texas: A Guide to the Lone Star State:

"Right here to the RUINS OF OLD FORT LANCASTER, 0.7 m., established in 1854 as Camp Lancaster, and officially designated as Fort Lancaster in 1856. It was abandoned in 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War. Chimneys stand above the mounds of crumbled stone and earth that once were buildings. The gravestones in the cemetery bear the names of soldiers, members of their families and Texas Rangers. Beyond the ruins the pasture road leads on to the route of the California Trail, 1.3 m. Here the frontier highway descends from a steep hill, and deep ruts made by wagons are still visible.

Along this road ran the San Antonio-San Diego Stage Line and much of the east-west traffic before the days of railroads."

Book: Texas Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 641 Year Originally Published: 1940

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Date Logged Log User Rating   12/27/2016 Benchmark Blasterz visited it