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The plan had been to build the fort at a site
in Coleman County but Smith, unfamiliar with the area, changed the locale
to the Clear Fork near its junction with Elm Creek. This decision
affected the post’s future as the fort was built in an area with
inadequate water and building timbers to supply the needs of new garrison.
Stone was brought in from Elm Creek about two
miles south of the fort and oak logs for the officers' quarters and
hospital had to be brought in by ox wagon from as far away as forty miles.
The guardhouse, magazine and commissary storehouse were built entirely of
stone, but the other buildings were built in an adobe style.
 Fort Phantom Hill
was never officially named. Rather, it was simply referred to as the
"Post on the Clear Fork of the Brazos." There are two legends about the
origin of the unofficial designation
Phantom Hill,
the first of which is that the hill rises sharply from the plains when
approached from a distance, but seems to level out as it is approached,
vanishing like a phantom. The second account is that of a nervous sentry
who fired on what he thought was an
Indian
on the hill. The investigation that followed failed to discover the
presence of any
Indians,
and one of the troopers suggested that the man had seen a ghost.
Life at the fort was difficult for the soldiers
as Elm Creek was often dry, and the waters of the Clear Fork were
brackish. Early on, an eighty-foot-deep well was dug near the guardhouse,
but even it was not always reliable. More often than not, it was necessary
to haul barrels of water in wagons from a spring about four miles upriver
from the post. Because of the lack of water a post garden could not be
toiled, leading to a shortage of vegetable in the men’s diet. As a
result the soldiers began to suffer from scurvy, fevers, dysentery, colds
and pneumonia. Desertions at the fort were said to have been common
due to the monotony and loneliness at the isolated fort.
One member of the garrison, Lieutenant Clinton
W. Lear wrote a letter to his wife in Fort Washita that described it this
way:
“When I say to you
that we have a beautiful valley to look upon, I have said everything
favorable that could be said of this place. We are camped in a grove
of blackjack two or three hundred yards from the creek which is alt.
Everybody is disgusted. Like the Dove after the Deluge, not one
green sprig can we find to indicate this was ever intended by man to
inhabit. Indeed I cannot imagine that God ever intended for white
man to occupy such a barren waste.”
Although the isolated fort was vulnerable to attacks, its
garrison had only peaceful encounters with the
Indians,
including the
Comanches, Lipans, Wichitas,
Kiowas, and Kickapoos. Because its occupation was relatively uneventful,
the fort was abandoned on April 6, 1854. At the time of its
evacuation, the
Indian
menace had been curbed due to the establishment of reservations on the
upper Brazos and the Clear Fork to the northeast.
As the troops
marched out of
Fort Phantom
headed toward El Paso, the looked back to discover the fort was in flames.
The event was blamed on the
Indians
or Confederate troops, but many said that it was the members of the
garrison, because of their distaste for the post, who set the fire.
In 1858 the remaining structures of the fort
were repaired and utilized as a way station the Southern Overland
(Butterfield) Mail Stagecoach Line. During the
Civil War, Colonel
James B. (Buck) Barry and some of his units used
Fort Phantom Hill
as a base of field operations. Beginning in 1871, the fort served as a
subpost of Fort Griffin, near the site of present Albany,
Texas .
After the
Indian Wars
subsided, a town grew up around the fort ruins. In 1876-77, it was a
buying and shipping point for buffalo hides. By 1880,
Fort Phantom
had a population of more than 500 and was made the Jones County seat the
following year in May, 1991. However, that was a short lived title,
as the county seat was moved just six months later in November to nearby
Anson,
Texas .
The
Texas
and Pacific Railway routed its tracks through Abilene, fourteen miles to
the south. A letter written to the San Antonio Express in
1892 commented that
Fort Phantom
contained nothing but "one hotel, one saloon, one general store, one
blacksmith shop, and 10,000 prairie dogs."
In 1928, John
Guitar of Abilene,
Texas
purchased the property. In 1969, his grandson, Jim Alexander, also
of Abilene, deeded the property to the
Fort Phantom
Foundation to ensure its long-term preservation.
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