According to legend, Col. Diego Ortiz Parrilla oversaw a campaign of revenge against Taovaya and Comanche Indians in 1759 after they had looted the Presidio San Luis de las Amarillas.

The Taovayan town was guarded by some 6,000 Indians who were flying the French flag and was fortified with entrenchments, wooden stockades, and a moat when several hundred Spanish soldiers arrived.

The Spanish had established peace with the Indians by 1771, but continuing theft, particularly of horses, prompted Athanase de Mézières, the lieutenant governor of the Natchitoches province, to visit in 1778.

The Taovayas had long since left, so an early White settler who visited the ruins in 1859 didn't know anything about their past and imagined it had been a former Spanish fort.

After bedding their herds at Red River Station, stockmen on the path rode to the nearby town of Burlington for supplies and entertainment.

Later, Justin's wife claimed that during the height of the cattle industry, there had been over 40 killings; in fact, on one Christmas morning, three men had been murdered before breakfast.

Outlaws hiding out in Indian Territory traveled across the Red River to Spanish Fort to get supplies, frequently starting "affrays" that further troubled the town.

When the cattle paths shifted further west and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway omitted the town, the excitement at Spanish Fort eventually subsided.

After more than a century of farming by residents of Spanish Fort, the remains of the old Taovaya fortification vanished, but the location of the former San Teodoro was commemorated by a state historical monument built in 1936.