Fort Concho: Its Why and Wherefore

FORT CONCHO MUSEUM San Angelo, Texas
A people who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestry will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants. —Macaulay
The Department of the Interior on October 7, 1961 designated this Fort as a National Historic Landmark.
Fort Concho 1867-1889
J. N. Gregory
Cover by A. J. Redd
First Printing 1957 Second Printing 1962 Third Printing 1970
NEWSFOTO YEARBOOKS San Angelo, Texas
Dedicated to the pioneer men and women of our Southwest.
Many people who visit the Fort Concho Museum and look over the parade ground and buildings of old Fort Concho, naturally ask the question, “Why did the United States Government build a fort in this place, and what did the fort accomplish?”
The object of this pamphlet is to answer that question, and to present the answer to the inquiring visitor at as small a cost as the printer makes possible.
The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that brought to a close the war between the United States and Mexico, February 2, 1848, and the subsequent Gadsden Purchase of 1853, set the plan for the present boundaries between the two countries. A vast area of plains, deserts and mountains, an unmapped and untraveled wilderness was now owned by the Northern Republic. It was inhabited mostly by Comanche, Apache, Kiowa and other warlike Indian tribes, and it stretched from the settlements of South and East Texas, and from the lower Missouri River area to the new American settlements on the Pacific Coast.