Camp Wood, Texas

Camp Wood is on the Nueces River at the intersection of Farm Road 337 and State Highway 55, just below Camp Wood Creek in far southwestern Real County. The settlement was founded in 1920 by workers of the Uvalde Cedar Company for the purpose of exploiting the abundant cedar in the area. The site of the town and the immediate vicinity have, however, been inhabited for several millenia, as revealed by archeological evidence. The town is situated in the Nueces Canyon on the Balcones Escarpment, at the southern edge of the Edwards Plateau, amid plentiful supplies of water, game, and other natural resources. The excellence of the site for habitation is attested by evidence of successive occupations since the Archaic and Neo-American periods. The modern town's water is supplied by the same spring that earlier served San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz Mission (1762-71), established by Franciscans for the Lipan Apaches who inhabited the region during the historic period, and the United States military outpost Camp Wood (1857-61), from which the town derives its name. After the mission was abandoned, Indians continued to return to the site. White occupation did not cease with the withdrawal of federal troops at the start of the Civil War . Edward D. Westfall moved to the site at this time and remained until 1874, raising cattle and serving as a scout for Confederate troops stationed there. Jerusha Sánchez, a midwife in the Nueces Canyon, also reportedly came into the area in the early 1860s, and in 1864 the family of George Schwander was occupying the remains of the old mission when Lipans killed Mrs. Schwander and abducted their son, Albert. In 1873 the widow Elizabeth Hill moved to the canyon with her three sons, John, Ed, and Jim, the last of whom subsequently served as a scout for Gen. John Bullis and purchased a house from the Sánchez family. The United States military and the Texas Rangers also briefly reoccupied Camp Wood in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1917-18 Joe Sweeten ran a store a mile north of the site of present Camp Wood on the Uvalde-Rocksprings road (Highway 55); the store served local ranchers and freighters hauling goods between Rocksprings and Uvalde and was referred to as Real City. In 1920 Camp Wood became the northern terminus of the Uvalde and Northern Railroad, and the townsite was formally laid out. Cedar workers initially lived in tents, but during the 1920s the settlement rapidly developed into a prosperous community. The post office was established in November 1921, and the town was incorporated in 1936. However, the depression and the depletion of the region's cedar curtailed development. The Uvalde and Northern ceased operation in the early 1940s, and ranching, in particular the raising of Angora goats, replaced cedar as the principal industry, with tourism and hunting assuming increasing importance in the local economy. In March 1924 Charles A. Lindbergh made an unplanned stop in Camp Wood, three years before his solo flight from New York to Paris. Lindbergh, then waiting to enter Brooks Field at San Antonio as a United States Air Service cadet, was attempting to fly to California with a friend, Leon Klink, and followed the Uvalde and Northern railroad up the Nueces River, mistaking it for the Southern Pacific along the Rio Grande. When the line ended at the recently established cedar town, Lindbergh, realizing his error, landed in a pasture to the north. Later, having flown to Camp Wood itself and landed on the main street, he attempted to take off, hit a telephone pole with a wing, and crashed into the paint section of Walter Pruett's hardware store. The two fliers remained in Camp Wood for several days, awaiting parts and making repairs, and their visit and the circumstances surrounding it were still vividly recalled and related over half a century later. In 1976 the town of Camp Wood renamed a park and a street after Lindbergh and Klink respectively, and the state placed a historical mark

Texas was important in the career of aviation hero Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-75). When he bought his first World War I surplus Jenny in Georgia, he flew it to Texarkana in 1923, so he could say he had flown in Texas -- the ambition of every barnstormer. With L. A. Klink in March 1924, he landed Klink's Canuck in Camp Wood while trying to fly to California. The next day in attempting a take-off, he accidentally crashed into Warren Puett's Store. No one was hurt, and his offer to pay for the damage was rejected. Then called "Slim," Lindbergh made many friends here. Two weeks after visiting Camp Wood, he became a U.S. Air Service cadet at Brooks Field, San Antonio. He completed advanced flight training at Kelly Field in 1925. On May 20-21, 1927, he made the first solo flight from New York to Paris, to world acclaim. Later in 1927, he returned to Texas, surveying the first commercial transcontinental air route through Amarillo; in 1929, he inaugurated U.S.-Mexico airmail in Brownsville. A great aviation pioneer, he drew up and proved many major world air routes. He flew in combat in World War II; collaborated in medical research; helped organize the Berlin airlift; and remained a hero to people of Camp Wood and Texas. (1977)

(Cedar Creek Ranch and graves about 9 miles WNW) Indians attacked goat camp of Nick Coalson on June 1, 1877; son Arthur, 10, was killed; Johnny, 14, wounded. Coalson escaped after 3 hours of hard fighting. One year later he lost his wife Alice, a daughter Etta Elizabeth (twin of Arthur), and infant stepson in another Indian raid. Captains Pat Dolan and Dan Roberts with Texas Ranger units, S.D. Coalson (Nick's son), U.S. Army scout Jim Hill, Jim and John Welch, and Henry and Sam Wells pursued but failed to find the Indians. The victims' graves are near old homesite, on Half-Moon Prairie. Coalson descendants are prominent in Texas history. (1972)

Camp Wood was on the Nueces River near the site of the present-day town of Camp Wood in far southwestern Real County. It was established as a United States military outpost on May 20, 1857, when it was occupied by Lt. E. D. Philips and a company of the First Infantry assigned to protect the San Antonio-El Paso route and the Rio Grande valley from Indian raids. The camp was located near the ruins of San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz Mission; its water was supplied by the same spring that had earlier served the mission and that later provided water for the town of Camp Wood. The installation was named for Bvt. Maj. George W. F. Wood. The camp was temporarily abandoned on October 29, 1857. Lt. John Bell Hood , later commander of Hood's Texas Brigade , reestablished the post in 1858 with a company of the Second Cavalry and remained until November 1860. The post was abandoned by Union troops in the spring of 1861 and was afterward occupied by Confederate forces. Walter Paye Lane 's rangers arrived on June 14, 1861, and W. W. Heartsill , a member of this detachment, described its stay in his journals, later published as Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days in the Confederate Army (1876). Edward Dixon Westfall , an early settler of Southwest Texas, also lived at Camp Wood during this period, raising cattle and acting as a guide for the Confederates. After the Civil War the site was periodically used by United States troops and Texas Rangers , and the influx of settlers began. Jim Hill, who served as a scout for Gen. John Bullis , moved to the area with his mother and brothers in 1873. According to local residents, buildings and the camp cemetery, the latter of which continued to be used after the post was abandoned, were still extant at the site in the early twentieth century. The buildings have since disappeared, however, and the headstones from the cemetery were eventually taken up and used to line a flower bed.

After the destruction of Santa Cruz de San Sabá Mission in March 1758, Spanish presence at the site of the future Menard, Texas, was reduced to the military outpost of San Luis de las Amarillas. The presidio commander, Col. Diego Ortiz Parrilla , was relieved of command in 1760, after his defeat in the disastrous Red River campaign of the previous year. His replacement was Felipe de Rábago y Terán , the infamous former captain of the San Gabriel presidio, who had languished in prison over the previous eight years. Rábago carried instructions from Viceroy Marqués de Cruillas to explore lands between the San Saba River and New Mexico, with the objective of establishing Spanish presence in a region that was threatened by the French. But results of the new commander's reconnaissances, coupled with the entreaties of Lipan Apache chieftains, persuaded him to ignore the viceroy's directive and to found a settlement on the upper Nueces River. Therein lay a serious problem that plagued the undertaking, for the viceroy steadfastly refused to provide badly needed financial support. The agreed-upon site, situated about halfway between San Sabá and San Juan Bautista, was called El Cañón. Initially, the settlement of San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz was founded, and a mission with the same name was set up on January 23, 1762. Stationed at the religious outpost were fathers Diego Jiménez and Joaquín de Baños, as well as a garrison of twenty soldiers detached from the presidio at San Sabá. Although the mission attracted 400 Indians within a week, the priests soon perceived that the Apaches had no real interest in conversion. Rather, the natives viewed the site as a haven from their enemies, for the Spaniards would serve as their defenders. The mission complex itself included a square plaza of seventy varas (sixty-four yards) on each side, which was surrounded by poorly constructed walls that provided some security. The mission came under attack by 300 Comanches and their allies in October 1766, followed by a second assault in the following month, but both were repulsed. When the Marqués de Rubí visited San Lorenzo in July 1767, he was highly critical of it and the nearby mission, Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria del Cañón. In Rubí's judgment, there was no hope for converting the Apaches, and he recommended that both missions be abandoned. That sentiment was echoed by Jacobo de Ugarte y Loyola , governor of Coahuila, in April 1770. The official date of closure for the El Cañón missions was set at June 21, 1771, but in actuality they had been abandoned before that date. The remains of mission San Lorenzo have been excavated by Curtis D. Tunnell. They are located at the north edge of Camp Wood "on a low ridge which runs parallel to the east bank of the Nueces River" in Real County.

Founded by Franciscan missionaries among the Lipan Apache Indians in 1762. Abandoned in 1769.