page_title: Fort Lancaster
section_title: Preservation
hierarchical_section_title: Fort Lancaster / Preservation
caption_attribution_description: English: Ruins of the adobe and stone built Company K Enlisted Men's Barracks at Fort Lancaster State Park (c. 1857). This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 71000928
context_page_description: Fort Lancaster, one in a series of forts erected along the western Texas frontier, is located in the Pecos River Valley, along Live Oak Creek, in Crockett County, Texas, United States. The fort was established by Captain Stephen Decatur Carpenter on August 20, 1855, to guard the military supplies, commercial shipments, and immigrants moving along the San Antonio-El Paso Road. The 82 acre site, now operated by the Texas Historical Commission as Fort Lancaster State Historic Site, contains the ruins of twenty-nine buildings that made up the fort and a visitor center with a museum about the heritage of the fort.
context_section_description: Fort Lancaster was deeded to Crockett County in 1968 by private owners for its preservation and public use. Title to the land subsequently was transferred to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) on April 16, 1968.
  TPWD architects attempted the first interpretative restoration at the site with modern cement mortar to stabilize the remaining stone walls and cement-fortified adobes to simulate the original plain-mud adobes of the enlisted men's mess-hall. Associated with the 1974-1976 archeological investigations and as a preservation measure the archeologists in 1976 made adobes from untempered mud dug on site with hand tools. These adobes, sized to duplicate the original adobe bricks, were laid atop remaining original adobe walls at some of the officer's quarters on the north side of the parade ground. Remains of these adobes still formed a protective preservative layer as late as April, 2010. A budget shortfall prompted the State to yield management of the site to Texas Rural Communities, Incorporated, in 1993. On January 1, 2008, operational control of the site was transferred from TPWD to the Texas Historical Commission, which now manages preservation and public visitation of the site.
  A scale model of Fort Lancaster is on display at the Crockett County Museum in nearby Ozona, Texas.
caption: Ruins of Company K Enlisted Men's Barracks at Fort Lancaster, c. 1857
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