A Day at Fort Davis and Davis Mountain State Park
Sightseeing in southern Texas
From where we are currently parked at Big Bend National Park, Fort Davis National Historic Site is 101 miles to the north. If I waited until we get up to Carlsbad, New Mexico in March, it would be 160 miles to the south. I didn’t want to miss seeing this national park so we made the trip yesterday.
When we arrived at Fort Davis, the temperature had dropped to only 50 degrees and the wind picked up to about 20 miles an hour with gusts. It was freezing to us since we are more used to the 70 and 80 degrees in the Big Bend area with little wind. It made it quite chilly to walk around the fort.
Fort Davis was established by the U.S. Army in 1854. The Jeff Davis County Jail in the picture above was built in 1910 and retained its original function until 1978. These one story jailhouses were popular in the 19th century. Once it no longer met requirements as a jail, it was occupied by the county clerk until 2009. Today it sits vacant at the Clay Espy Memorial Park in the town of Fort Davis.
