When the US Army returned to Texas in the later 1860s, the fort was reoccupied and rebuilt, and became a base for the "Buffalo Soldier", or all-African American, 24th Infantry and 9th Cavalry Regiments.

[2] Europeans first reached the San Saba River valley, in central Texas, in the 17th century, when the Spanish Empire established contact with the Jumano people.

[3] After existing as an independent republic for a decade, Texas was annexed by the United States of America in 1845,[4] which led to the start of the Mexican-American War the next year.

[7] In 1851, Colonel Persifor Frazer Smith, commander of the Department of Texas,[8] inspected those posts and ordered that a second line of forts be established farther west.

[9] The forts of that line – Belknap, Chadbourne, Clark, Mason, McKavett, Phantom Hill, and Terrett – were established between June 24, 1851, and November 18, 1852, along the trails through Texas.

[17] For its first year of existence, none of the completed buildings at the fort had any floors, doors, or glass windows, and materials for these things had to be brought from Fredericksburg, 100 miles (160 km) away.

[19][20] Fort McKavett was at that time in a remote location, which complicated supply and communications,[21][22] despite its being connected by road to San Antonio by April 1853.

[27] In March 1861,[28] the Confederate government placed the defense of Texas's frontier upon career soldier Benjamin McCulloch, who passed the task onto his brother, Henry.

The latter assembled a force of ten companies and garrisoned them in the abandoned US Army forts,[28][29] establishing a line 400 miles (640 km) long.

[23] In November 1863, all Confederate troops on the frontier were sent east to fight the United States, which left civilian militias as the only defense for Texan settlements.

In December 1866, the 4th Cavalry Regiment,[32] which arrived in Texas the previous August,[33] was ordered to occupy the pre-war Forts Clark, Inge, Mason, and McKavett, and Camp Verde.

[37] With the exception of the original commanding officer's residence,[38] every building on Fort McKavett's grounds had by April 1868 been reduced to ruins, obliging its new garrison to live out of tents and temporary wooden structures.

[45] From 1869 to 1871, the garrison rebuilt Fort McKavett's permanent structures and began regular patrols to locate and/or pursue raiding indigenous peoples,[40] but rarely encountered any belligerents.

[49] In May 1871, William Tecumseh Sherman, Commanding General of the United States Army from 1869,[50] inspected the Texas frontier and its garrisons, including Fort McKavett.

Near the end of that tour, Sherman narrowly missed being killed by a party of Kiowa and subsequently issued orders for more aggressive measures against the Plains Nations.

[50][51] Mackenzie immediately began campaigns to drive the South Plains Nations from the Texas Panhandle and Llano Estacado,[49] for which he summoned troops from the frontier forts.