page_title: Fort Concho
section_title: Relationship with San Angelo, Texas
hierarchical_section_title: Fort Concho / Relationship with San Angelo, Texas
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: [Immigrants going through San Angelo, Texas] Creator: M. C. Ragsdale, Photographer Date: ca. 1885-1890 Part Of: Lawrence T. Jones III Texas photography collection Physical Description: 1 photographic print: albumen; 10.2 x 22.9 cm on 15.2 x 25.4 mount File: ag2008_0005_4_4_2_04_r_immigrants_opt.jpg Rights: Please cite DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University when using this file. A high-resolution version of this file may be obtained for a fee. For details see the https://sites.smu.edu/cul/degolyer/research/permissions/ web page. For other information, contact degolyer@smu.edu. For more information, see: http://digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/jtx/id/425 View the Lawrence T. Jones III Texas Photographs at: http://digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/search/collection/jtx
context_page_description: Fort Concho is a former United States Army installation located in San Angelo, Texas. It was established in November 1867 at the confluence of the Concho Rivers and on the Butterfield Overland Mail Route and Goodnight–Loving Trail. At its height during the American Indian Wars, Fort Concho consisted of 40 buildings on 40 acres of land leased by the US Army. The fort was abandoned in June 1889 and fell into civilian hands. Over the next twenty years, its buildings were used as residences or recycled for their material in the nearby town of San Angelo. Beginning in the late 1920s, a serious effort has been made to preserve and restore Fort Concho by its eponymous museum organization, founded in 1929. The property has been owned and operated by the city of San Angelo since 1935. It was named a National Historic Landmark on 4 July 1961. Fort Concho is one of the best-preserved examples of the military installations built by the US Army in the state of Texas.
  Over its 22-year career as a US Army base, Fort Concho housed elements of fifteen US Cavalry and Infantry regiments, most prominently the "Buffalo Soldiers" of the 9th and 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry regiments.
context_section_description: Bartholomew J. DeWitt borrowed $1500 from Marcus Koenigheim, a San Antonio-based investor and used it to buy a half-section of land on the opposite side of the Concho River of Fort Concho in 1870. He divided the area into plots to build a town, which he named Saint Angela (changed to San Angelo in 1881) after his wife, Carolina Angela de la Garza. The township was not a profitable venture. When Ben Ficklin was made the seat for Tom Green County instead of San Angelo, Koenigheim asked for payment of the balance and interest of DeWitt's loan in full. When he was unable to pay, Koenigheim sued him in 1875 and was awarded the 372 acres (151 ha) of land that constituted the town. By then, San Angelo was a collection of saloons and brothels and had a reputation befitting that.
  Relations between the town and Fort Concho's garrison, who called San Angelo "the town over the river", were tentative. The enlisted men often spent and money in the town, but its inhabitants treated the garrison's black soldiers with racist disdain and violence. When one of the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry was murdered on 31 January 1881, an entire company of the 16th Infantry and the slain man's comrades arrested the sheriff on 2 February and demanded the murderer. He was not given up, but the soldiers returned to the fort without incident. Two days later, and acting on rumors that the murderer had been released, the soldiers returned and attacked the Nimitz Hotel, where he was rumored to be staying. The Texas Rangers arrived to help calm the situation and did this by issuing threats to attack the fort and to shoot any soldier that crossed the Concho River in a ten-day period. Tension existed between the civilians and Fort Concho until after the 10th Cavalry left in 1882 and was replaced by the 16th Infantry. The aid rendered to locals by the fort's garrison, especially the 16th Infantry, following the flood of 1888 and fires in the vicinity eventually evaporated the lingering animosity.
  Fort Concho was crucial to San Angelo's early growth. The presence of its garrison attracted traders and settlers and allowed diversification of the town's economy. Some of the sutlers that supplied Fort Concho's troops were William S. Veck, one of the organizers of Tom Green County and owner of San Angelo's first bank, and James L. Millspaugh, another county commissioner who helped bring the railroad to San Angelo. When the fort was abandoned, the local economy suffered enough to cause the closing of Koenigheim's business in San Angelo. Fort Concho's chaplains were some of the first preachers and educators in the town. The medical staff, chiefly surgeon William Notson, treated not just the garrison but also civilian townsfolk and ranchers. One of Notson's civilian assistants, Samuel L.S. Smith, became San Angelo's first physician and in 1910 helped establish its first civilian hospital.
caption: Immigrants and their wagons passing through San Angelo in 1885
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