[2]: 6 The decision to establish Fort Elliott in what was to become Wheeler County, Texas, was made in December 1874 by Colonel Nelson A.

Miles as an advance supply post during the campaign to clear the Texas Panhandle of American Indians after the Second Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874.

Major James Biddle established a temporary post on 3 February 1875 with four troops of the 6th US Cavalry and four companies of the 5th Infantry and the permanent location of the fort on 5 June 1875, twenty-seven miles west of Indian Territory near the headwaters of Sweetwater Creek.

In subsequent years, the fort was garrisoned to protect the borders of the Panhandle with Indian Territory, and the cattle drives from Texas to Kansas.

[3] The town of Mobeetie in Wheeler County, where Timothy Dwight Hobart and Temple Lea Houston were early settlers, grew beside it.