Camp Breckenridge, Camp Cooper on frontier

On the Stephens County Courthouse lawn is a Historical marker for Camp Breckenridge, but few county residents know much about this encampment which was located on the Gunsolus Creek, six miles above the confluence with Hubbard Creek, which is near Crystal Falls, in northern Stephens County.

Camp Breckenridge was established by Colonel James M. Norris, with half of Captain John Salmon’s company of the Frontier Regiment on March 21, 1862. Salmon’s company was organized in February, 1862 with slightly more than 100 men and maintained Camp Salmon, located in southwestern Stephens County and Camp Breckenridge as a deterrent against the Comanche and Kiowa Indian aggression.

However, Capt. R. Whiteside, who commanded at Camp Breckenridge in 1863, stated that the only service that was satisfactorily rendered was to carry the mail, because “the patrol keeps horses poor and when we find the Indians, they can outrun us.”

Camp Breckenridge was plagued with inadequate supplies, low morale and the frequent change of commanding officers. The camp actually supplied little service to residents on the frontier.

A report submitted in late 1863, found only 26 out of 54 men who should have been at Camp Breckenridge: one had been killed, four were AWOL (absent without leave) and the rest were either sick, on patrol or hunting for lost horses.

The entire Frontier Regiment was mustered into the regular Confederate service during the last year of the Civil War, 1864-1865.

Camp Breckenridge was used briefly during Reconstruction by area settlers who took refuge there against the raiding Comanche and Kiowa Indians.

The Historical Marker for Camp Breckenridge, in pink marble, reads: “Camp Breckenridge C.S.A.

Established near this site 1862. Part Confederate Frontier defense line from Red River to Rio Grande occupied by Company of Texas Frontier Regiment. Posts were day’s horseback ride apart and area patrolled regularly. Duties included curbing Indian raids, rounding up draft evaders and renegades. Confederate’s poorly fed, clothed and lacked horses, ammunition. They shared few of the glories of war, but at the cost of lives of not a few of them. These men gave a measure of protection to a vast frontier area.”

A Memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy. 1861 CSA 1865

Erected by the state of Texas 1963.

Camp Cooper was established on the Clear Fork, on the northern bank of the Brazos River, seven miles north of the site of the present-day Fort Griffin State Historic Site, in the south, central Throckmorton County. Although it was in the next neighboring county to the northwest, Camp Cooper continued to be part of the Frontier Defense System and aided residents who “forted up” at Fort Davis and the Cooper and Lynch Ranches, which were both in Shackelford and Stephens Counties.

It was established by the Texas State Legislature in January 1856 and named for the United States Army Adjutant General Samuel Cooper. “Its’ mission was to protect the frontier and to monitor the nearby Comanche Indian Reservation.”

The area had been a campsite for three companies of the Fifth Infantry in 1851. The site and the whole area of this part of the western frontier was subsequently surveyed by Capt. Randolph B. Marcy and Robert S. Neighbors, who continued the survey into the Great Plains, to the Red River with a party of 70 men, which would include part of the area to become Stephens County. Lt. General Randolph B. Marcy would return in the 1870s with General Sherman, after the Warren Wagon Massacre, to access the need for Federal troops back on the Western Frontier, which was done at General Sherman’s direction after he toured the area and just missed being massacred on the very trail taken by the Warren Wagon Train a half-day later.

Camp Cooper was founded by Capt. Albert Sidney Johnston, in Jan. 1856, and became the Headquarters for four companies of the Second United States Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee. Both Capt. Johnston and Col. Lee would go on to honorably serve the Confederacy in key roles during the Civil War. However, this was Lee’s first command of a fort. He remained in charge for 15 months, from April 1856, until July 1857. Captains under his command included Earl Van Dorn and Theodore O’Hara.

Camp Cooper initially had adequate supplies of military stores, but it was constantly plagued by severe weather, insects, dust and an irregular supply train.

Troops from Camp Cooper participated in numerous campaigns and police actions against the hostile Comanche and Kiowa Indians and other straggler groups that had banded together to create chaos, including the pursuit of Chief Peta Nocona’s Co-manche Tribe that resulted in the death of Chief Peta Nocona and the recapture of Cynthia Ann Parker, who had been kidnapped previously and was returned to her family.

Local unrest declined after 1859, when the Comanche Indian Reservation was dissolved and they were moved from this area to another reservation in Oklahoma Territory. However, Indian unrest and raids continued throughout the area of Stephens County well into the mid-1870s, which included the Warren Wagon Massacre in 1871, which was traveling on the wellused Butterfield Overland Mail Route and Butterfield Stage Route.

Camp Cooper had stone and picket buildings for the officers’ quarters, a hospital and a commissary. Enlisted men on the post and the Regimental Band were quartered in barracks with shingle roofs and walls of mud bricks. Additionally, a Post Office operated at the camp from March to October 1860, but the coming of the Civil War ended the camp’s usefulness on the frontier and it was abandoned by Feb. 1861, when Capt. S. D. Carpenter surrendered Camp Cooper to Col. W.C. Dalrymple. Four days later, all Federal military activity had ceased at Camp Cooper and it was changed to the Texas Frontier Defense System.

Next, more about the military ‘Camps’ established on the western frontier to “fort up” for the pioneering civilian population.