Bead-Fort Davis Brown Wavy Wood TB

Please drop this item in rural or Premium Member Only caches.  Do not drop it in an urban cache or leave it behind at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; this prevents the chain and tag tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take this travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission needed to leave the US.

Medium Wavy Wood Donut.  While the TB owner lives on the Southern High Plains in the Panhandle of northwest Texas, he has spent considerable time in what many Texans would call Far West Texas.  It remains a favorite part of the state.  Much of it is the Chihuahuan Desert.  In the desert are remotes outposts of civilization and even mountains that rise high enough to harbor junipers and pines.  This travel bug commemorates a favorite place in the region, partly because the history and partly because of memories.

Fort Davis, in Jeff Davis County, is at the eastern base of the Davis Mountains.  It was founded in as one of many forts along a major route a route of westward migration.  It was established by order of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, under President Franklin Pierce, in 1854—both the county and the Fort were named in his honor.   
 
Originally the site of the fort was an Indian camp on Limpia Creek. A stage stop was set up in 1850 for the mail route between San Antonio and El Paso. The Fort was formed in 1854 to billet the troops needed to patrol and protect the area from Apaches.  With the beginning of the Civil War, United States troops evacuated Fort Davis to be quickly replaced by Confederate cavalry forces in April 1861. Confederate troops occupied the post for almost a year, then retreated to San Antonio after failing to take New Mexico. For the next five years Fort Davis lay abandoned, and Indians used the wood from its buildings for fuel.
 
Federal troops reoccupied Fort Davis in June 1867 and began construction of a new post. By the mid-1880s Fort Davis was a major installation with quarters for more than 600 men and more than sixty adobe and stone structures. From 1867 to 1885 the post was garrisoned primarily by units composed of white officers and black enlisted men of the Ninth and Tenth United States Cavalry regiments (the Buffalo Soldiers) and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth United States Infantry regiments.
 
Fort Davis is one of the best surviving examples of an Indian Wars' frontier military post in the Southwest.  The picturesque remains of Fort Davis, more extensive and impressive than those of any other southwestern fort, are a vivid modern reminder of a colorful chapter in western history.
 
On the writer’s first trip into the Davis Mountains, he traveled the road up Limpia Canyon from Balmorhea.  It was beautiful!  That was the first treat.  The second treat was driving by the old fort, the third was motoring on into town and seeing the quaint old courthouse and finally pulling into the Texaco across from the courthouse, dealing with a crusty attendant and seeing the stuffed mountain lion up on the wall.  It was all so unexpected and exciting!