Fort Inge and the Line That Held the Hill Country

The western edge of Texas settlement in the eighteen forties was not a line so much as a series of outposts, each one a day's hard ride from the next, positioned to watch the terrain between them and report what came through. Fort Inge was one of those outposts. It was established in March of eighteen forty-nine on the left bank of the Leona River, about a mile and a half southeast of modern Uvalde, on a limestone bluff overlooking the crossing. The site was chosen because the Leona ford was a natural transit point on the route connecting San Antonio to the Rio Grande settlements, and the Comanche and Apache raiders who swept down from the north knew it too.

The fort was named for Lieutenant Zebulon Inge of Alabama, killed at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma in eighteen forty-six, one of the first engagements of the Mexican-American War. The army built rough wooden structures and a small parade ground. Conditions were harsh: the Leona was unreliable in drought, the limestone soil barely grew forage, and the isolation meant resupply was slow. The garrison was small, typically fewer than a hundred men, drawn from the First Infantry and later the Eighth and First United States cavalry.

Among the officers who served at Fort Inge were men whose names would later appear on both sides of the Civil War. Robert E. Lee inspected posts along this chain in eighteen fifty-six. John Bell Hood, for whom Fort Hood in central Texas would later be named, served here in the eighteen fifties. William J. Hardee commanded at San Antonio and oversaw posts including this one. The frontier army that trained on the Texas line in the fifties produced a remarkable number of the generals who would command both armies a decade later.

The army abandoned Fort Inge in eighteen sixty-nine as the defensive line moved further west. The buildings deteriorated rapidly in the South Texas heat. The site is now a Uvalde County park, and archaeological work in the nineteen eighties and nineties recovered foundations and artifacts. Little stands above ground, but the bluff and the river crossing look much as they did when the garrison watched the plains from here.