Reviews

Frontier Crossroads: Fort Davis and the West by Robert Wooster

liberrydude's review

3.0

I picked this book up during a visit to the Fort and it's a quick down and dirty on the history of the Fort and the area. It reads well and covers a lot of ground getting into social history as well. One of the takeaways from my tour of the fort was that it was a logistical depot for West Texas. That role wasn't emphasized or really mentioned in the book. The book emphasized the fort as an economic engine for the Trans Pecos West and also as a social mixing pot where the class and racist tensions of the South and the times, although present, were more relaxed. Lots of interesting facts like black troops didn't desert like white troops and infantry could often outpace cavalry in the pursuit of raiders due to mules and horses needing water. I'm surprised more wasn't made of the camels introduced to the fort by Jefferson Davis. They were great animals for pursuit but the handlers didn't like them because of their smell, breath, and tendency to bite. If camels had caught on one wonders how things would have turned out.