Fort Concho is a former United States Army installation and National Historic Landmark District located in San Angelo, Texas.

Fort Concho was named a National Historic Landmark on July 4, 1961, and is one of the best-preserved examples of the military installations built by the US Army in Texas.

[3] To protect its citizens, the United States Army ordered the construction of a string of forts along the frontier's routes of travel from 1850 to 1852.

They identified the junction of the Concho Rivers as an ideal site because of its proximity to the routes it was to guard and nearby grazing land, and the abundance of water.

[18][19] In mid-1867, Major John Porter Hatch, commanding the 4th Cavalry, dispatched Lieutenant Peter M. Boehm to establish a camp on the Middle Concho, 50 miles (80 km) to the south of Fort Chadbourne.

Construction of a permanent outpost began on a site north of the camp, which was named Fort Concho in March 1868 by Edward M. Stanton, United States Secretary of War.

[20] Captain David W. Porter, assistant quartermaster of the Department of Texas, was tasked with constructing Fort Concho on December 10, 1867.

[21] Progress was slow,[22] as all building materials had to be shipped in[23] and there was frequent bickering among the fort's officers, Huntt and Porter included.

Cram was also frequently absent from the fort, and in the year of his arrival had the regional mail line superintendent, Major Ben Ficklin, arrested.

The United States Postmaster General intervened and by August, Cram was reassigned and construction was handed to Captain Joseph Rendlebrock, the 4th Cavalry's quartermaster.

By the end of the year, Fort Concho consisted of four barracks, eight officers' residences, the hospital, a magazine, bakery, several storehouses, workshops, and stables.

[31] In the first seven months of Fort Concho's existence, its garrison – numbering 129, out of a force of 3,672 in Texas, according to the 1869 reports of the War Department – were occupied by its plodding construction.

[32] Meanwhile, outside of building work, the garrison patrolled, scouted, and escorted cattle herds and wagon trains on the San Antonio–El Paso Road.

Sheridan adopted a strategy of feinting and constant movement early in the year, and then punitive expeditions in the winter, when the tribes' ponies would be weakest.

A notable exception was a patrol carried out by Sergeant William Wilson from March 26 to 29, 1872, that led to the US Army's discovery of water in the Staked Plains and a large Comanche settlement at Mushaway Peak.

Hatch,[40] in charge of Fort Concho for Mackenzie,[41] reported Wilson's findings, which were confirmed by another patrol by Captain Napoleon B.

[45] On June 27, 1874, more than 200 indigenous warriors attacked a group of buffalo hunters camped at Adobe Walls, beginning the Red River War.

[50] Stationed at Forts Concho, Stockton, Davis, Quitman, and Clark,[49] and their subposts,[51] the 10th Cavalry was tasked with patrolling the frontier, escorting wagons and settlers, and mounting expeditions.

[52][53] In late 1879, Grierson received word that a war party of Ojo Caliente and Mescalero Apache under Chief Victorio entered the Trans-Pecos.

Ten days before Hough and the regimental headquarters arrived at the fort that August, the Concho River flooded, destroying the town of Ben Ficklin and badly damaging San Angelo.

[59] By the mid-1880s, ranches enclosed the surrounding plains with barbed-wire fencing; the soldiers, barred by law from cutting the wire, were reduced to patrolling roads.

[62] The fort's chaplains were some of the first preachers and educators in the town and its medical staff, chiefly surgeon William Notson, also treated civilians.

Eleven years later, the Daughters of the American Revolution raised funds to preserve the fort and secured a designation for it as a Texas state historic site, with accompanying plaque.

[30] After the museum began expanding into other rooms of the courthouse, Carson moved it into Fort Concho's headquarters building on August 8, 1930.

[70] That same year, the city of San Angelo assumed partial administrative responsibility for the museum,[72][73] to be managed by a board of directors headed by Carson until she retired in 1953.

[82] On April 3, 2008, following a call from an alleged victim of abuse by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamist Mormon sect, Texas authorities raided the YFZ Ranch,[83] 45 miles (72 km) from San Angelo.

[85] As of August 2019,[update] the Fort Concho Historic District consists of 25 buildings standing on a 40-acre (16 ha) site, with a museum collection of 40,000 items.

Each building was constructed from limestone upon a low-lying stone foundation, usually with an attached wooden veranda, with gabled roofs shingled in wood.

[111] On July 13, 1990, the E. H. Danner Museum of Telephony, part of the West Texas Collection of Angelo State University, was opened in the building.

[114] The Fort Concho Museum purchased the schoolhouse in 1946 and restored it with funds raised by US military personnel on nearby Goodfellow Air Force Base.