Fort Hancock, Texas, Border Outpost at the River Bend

Fort Hancock sits in the Rio Grande valley of Hudspeth County, Texas, about fifty miles southeast of El Paso, at a point where the river makes a wide bend against the Sierra Vieja mountains. A military post was established here in eighteen eighty-two as Camp Rice and renamed in eighteen eighty-six for General Winfield Scott Hancock, the Union commander at Gettysburg who ran for president in eighteen eighty. The fort protected travelers and trade on the Rio Grande corridor and monitored cross-border raids during the same turbulent decades that saw activity along the entire borderland.

After the Army left, Fort Hancock became a small agricultural community relying on irrigation from the Rio Grande to grow cotton and vegetables in the otherwise harsh Chihuahuan Desert valley. Today it is an unincorporated community of about one thousand people, one of the last small towns before the long empty stretch approaching Van Horn.