Fort Phantom Hill
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Fort Phantom Hill
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Fort Phantom Hill Entrance
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| Location | Jones County, Texas, USA |
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| Nearest city | Abilene, Texas |
| NRHP Reference # | 72001367 |
| Added to NRHP | September 14, 1972 |
Fort Phantom Hill was a United States Army and Confederate Army installation located at the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in Taylor County, Texas. The fort was active from 1852 to 1853 and again from 1856 until the 1890s.
The post was established on November 14, 1851 by five companies of the 5th Infantry under Brevet Lt. Colonel John Joseph Abercrombieand just a year later was transformed into a well-organized and thoroughly developed post. Henry Hopkins Sibley assumed command on 24 Sept. 1853.
Conditions continued to be difficult for people at the fort, and in November 1853, approval was given for the military to abandon the fort. Shortly after the troops left on 6 April 1854, fire destroyed most of the log walls and thatch roofs of the buildings that made up this large and complex five-company post on the Texas Frontier. Several stone buildings, stone chimneys, and the stone building foundations remain intact today. A watercolor by J.B. Miller in the Center for American History in Austin, shows Fort Phantom Hill as it was before the fire.
In 1858, the property was reoccupied as a way station (No. 54) on the Southern Overland Mail route, Butterfield Stagecoach, at the abandoned fort until 1861.
Fort Phantom Hill was used again during the Civil War by the Confederacy's Frontier Battalion, and after the Civil War, in 1871, it became a sub-post of Fort Griffin (near Albany, Texas) during the Indian campaigns. Other forts in the frontier fort system, besides these two, were Forts Concho, Belknap, Chadbourne, , Fort Davis, Fort Bliss, McKavett, Clark, Fort McIntosh, Fort Inge and Richardson in Texas, and Fort Sill in Oklahoma. There were "sub posts or intermediate stations" including Bothwick's Station on Salt Creek between Fort Richardson and Fort Belknap, Camp Wichita near Buffalo Springs between Fort Richardson and Red River Station, and Mountain Pass between Fort Concho and Fort Griffin.
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