Fort DA Russell: The Army at the Edge of the Border

For thirty-four years, from nineteen eleven to nineteen forty-five, the United States Army maintained a post on the western edge of Marfa, and the history of that post mirrors the turbulent history of the Texas-Mexico border. The base was first established as Camp Albert in nineteen eleven, a cavalry camp sent to protect American settlers in west Texas in the years when revolution was tearing Mexico apart. Pancho Villa's cross-border raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in nineteen sixteen made the border situation feel urgent, and the camp expanded accordingly.

It was renamed Camp Marfa, then in nineteen thirty received its permanent name, Fort DA Russell, honoring a Union general who was killed in action during the Civil War. During World War Two, the fort became a training camp for artillery and chemical mortar battalions. It also held a camp for German prisoners of war, a fact that surprises most visitors to peaceful modern Marfa.

Several hundred German soldiers were interned here while American forces fought their way across Europe. The fort closed in nineteen forty-five. The land sat largely unused for decades.

Then, in nineteen seventy-nine, the New York minimalist artist Donald Judd began acquiring the fort's old buildings and the surrounding land to create a permanent installation for large-scale contemporary art. That property became the Chinati Foundation, and the former barracks and artillery sheds of the United States Army are now home to some of the most celebrated contemporary art installations in the world.