Fort Phantom Hill, also called the Camp on the Clear Fork,[a] is a former United States Army installation located in Jones County, Texas.

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

[11][12] The forts of this line – Belknap, Chadbourne, Clark, Davis, Mason, McKavett, Phantom Hill, Stockton, and Terrett – were established in the early 1850s at places Marcy recommended.

[13][14] One of these locations was the Clear Fork of the Brazos River, which Marcy erroneously noted in 1849 as possessing abundant water and game.

[15] In 1851, General William G. Belknap, commander of the Seventh Military District—an area corresponding to the present states of Arkansas and Oklahoma[16]—visited the Brazos River valley with Marcy to find locations for outposts.

[14][18] On November 3, General Persifor Frazer Smith, commander of the Department of Texas,[19] ordered that an outpost be created upon the "Phantom Hill" overlooking the Clear Fork,[20] 20 mi (32 km) from Pecan Bayou.

[23] Construction and basic life at the fort was complicated by a lack of usable wood, water, game, and fertile soil.

[38] On March 4, 1861, LeRoy Pope Walker, the Confederate Secretary of War, ordered career soldier Benjamin McCulloch to raise a volunteer force of ten companies to defend Texas's frontier.

[39] One of McCulloch's officers, Major James Buckner Barry, stationed a portion of his command at Fort Phantom Hill.

[14][40] After a campaign against the Comanche in 1861 quieted the frontier,[41] McCulloch's troops were sent to fight in the Trans-Mississippi theater as part of the 1st Texas Cavalry Regiment.

[44] After initially ignoring Texans' concerns about indigenous raiding in favor of reoccupying prewar installations along the border with Mexico, the US Army returned to the frontier and began expanding its presence there in 1866–67.

[52] In 1858, three of the fort's stone buildings were repaired and used for a station of the Butterfield Overland Mail along its route through Texas until it moved out of the state with the beginning of the Civil War in 1861.

[50] After the Red River War, a settlement was formed on Fort Phantom Hill's grounds that primarily serviced buffalo hunters roaming the region.

[57][58] In 1928, the grounds of Fort Phantom Hill were purchased by John Guitar, who then sold the land in 1969 to his grandson, Jim Alexander.