Fort Elliott

Fort Elliott was the United States Army outpost in the eastern Texas Panhandle from 1875 to 1890. Though never involved in a major military engagement, it helped transform the Panhandle from Indian hunting territory into a settlement area. Troops from Fort Elliott patrolled the borders of Indian Territory to the east, policed cattle drives headed north to Kansas railroad depots, and in other ways protected and encouraged settlement of the region.

In 1874 the army undertook a major offensive to clear the Panhandle of Indians after a Cheyenne attack on a camp of White buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls (see ADOBE WALLS, SECOND BATTLE OF). In December 1874 Col. Nelson A. Miles decided to establish an advance supply post for his forces from Camp Supply on the North Fork of the Red River. It was to be near a point where troops led by Lt. Col. George P. Buell had found a good campsite in September. By late January 1875 the camp was provisioned and garrisoned by 422 officers and men of the Fifth Infantry and Sixth Cavalry under the command of Maj. James Biddle. Within a month the Panhandle campaign ended, but the army ordered Biddle to select a site for a permanent post from which surveillance of the western boundary of Indian Territory could be maintained. He chose a low plateau overlooking Sweetwater Creek, twenty-seven miles west of the 100th meridian. Maj. H. C. Bankhead confirmed the choice in May when he relieved Biddle with 263 men of the Fourth United States Cavalry and Nineteenth Infantry. The new site was occupied in June. At first known simply as Cantonment on the Sweetwater, the post was renamed Fort Elliott the following February, in honor of Maj. Joel A. Elliott, who had died at the battle of the Washita.