The Spring at Fort Davis: What Archeology Found Beneath a Rebuilt Wall

Part of Fort Davis around 1885. NPS.

Testing the written record

Historical archeology often tests what documents say against what lies in the ground: do the remains confirm the written story, or tell another — and if so, why was something else written down? At Fort Davis National Historic Site, archeologists used this approach on the stone enclosure around the fort's spring. Was it a 1940s reconstruction? If so, was it in the right place? And if some original masonry survived, which parts? The answers show what archeology can add even at a site occupied fairly recently, especially about daily life that documents barely mention.

Fort Davis

The fort stands near Limpia Creek, on the east side of the Davis Mountains in western Texas. Founded in 1854, it housed troops of the Eighth Infantry campaigning against the Comanches, Kiowas and Apaches. When Texas seceded, federal troops left; Confederates held it from 1861 to 1862, and Union troops took it in 1862 but soon left. It stood empty until companies of the Ninth U.S. Cavalry — an African American regiment formed after the Civil War, the Buffalo Soldiers — returned and began a new fort just east of the old one, building into the 1880s. With the end of the Indian Wars and the Army's consolidation of frontier posts, the fort was abandoned in 1891.

Water at the fort

Water was always scarce. From the 1850s to the 1880s, it was hauled from Limpia Creek in mule-drawn wagons. In 1869 officers urged developing a nearby spring, which served for some years until it was blamed for diarrhea and the wagons resumed. Wells were dug near the barracks and officers' quarters by 1872, and after a thorough cleaning the spring was back in use in 1875, enclosed, the records say, by a stone wall, with a small pump.

The post surgeon, Ezra Woodruff, still worried about the water and wrote to the post adjutant:

There is a defect in the fact that the water passes through to the wall below the surface and rises directly into the [adjacent] drainage ditch. The ditch...is the resort of pigs and I have observed them wallowing in it within six feet of the spring… I would...suggest that the wall enclosing the spring should be made water tight by hydraulic cement, so that the water once escaped from the spring cannot flow back.

He also wanted the ditch graded steeper so water would drain away quickly, the spring covered with boards, and a wall built around it to keep people and animals from dipping dirty vessels into it. No document says his advice was followed, but period descriptions give the spring as 10 by 13 feet, holding 6 feet of water, and "walled up," and a period map shows irrigation ditches running from it to the fort garden.

The spring enclosure around 1930. Photograph probably by Frank Higgins, courtesy of Fort Davis National Historic Site.

After the Army

The abandoned buildings decayed. A 1916 photograph shows only the western part of the spring wall standing, the inside full of dirt. By about 1930 the spring had been cleaned out and held water, though the wall was unrepaired — probably the work of Jack Hoxie, a Hollywood movie man who saw a business opportunity. The local paper, the Alpine Avalanche, reported his plans in 1929–1932 for a rodeo ground, tennis court, golf course and other resort attractions — and, every time, a swimming pool fed by the spring, growing in the telling from "a splendid bathing pool" (April 1929) to a cement tank 18 inches to 10 feet deep (June 1929) to one 18 inches to 14 feet deep, fed by two springs, with bathhouses (April 1930). Cleaning the spring was likely a first step to show investors the pool could work. His plans collapsed in 1931.

In 1945 the land was sold to Mack H. Sproul, who sold 454 acres in 1946 to David A. Simmons, who wanted a historic attraction with vacation homes. He filled in old wells, and a photograph he took in the 1940s shows the enclosure with a rebuilt wall and working irrigation ditch. After his death in 1951, local residents formed the Fort Davis Historical Society, but vandalism grew until the National Park Service bought the site in 1961; cracks in a 1960 photograph suggest little upkeep. Park Service preservation began in 1985, with work in 1990, 1995, 2002 and 2010.

What the excavation found

Archeologists drew every stone of the standing wall to scale, photographed it, and compared the stones with historic photographs. The western section matched — so the enclosure was not entirely a reconstruction, nor built off its original spot.

Digging out the fill inside — possible because the falling water table had stopped the spring flowing years before — revealed two separate episodes of construction:

• An older enclosure of much smaller, mostly unshaped stones, with an outlet on the north and a thin concrete cap.
• A later, larger one of big shaped blocks in lime-rich mortar, built around and above the first, enclosing and enlarging it, with an outlet on the southeast, paved with a stone slab and sloping steeply.

The fill held bottle glass, historic and modern nails and wire — and, surprisingly, a penny from 2000 beneath a layer with historic square nails. The mixing shows the upper fill was added deliberately later, perhaps during early Park Service work to make the deep enclosure safer for visitors.

The later enclosure followed Surgeon Woodruff's recommendations exactly: a large, watertight wall with sealing lime mortar, high enough to keep animals and people away, and a high, steep outlet so water could not flow back. Here the archeology confirmed the written record and filled in the details it lacked — a window on how much the Army valued clean, reliable water in the West Texas desert.

Sources

Based on Emily J. Brown (Aspen CRM Solutions), "The History of the Spring Enclosure," Fort Davis National Historic Site, National Park Service; published by the National Park Service. The author is a contractor, so her account is paraphrased; the post surgeon's letter and the 1929–1930 Alpine Avalanche reports are quoted; rewritten in hubnx's own words.