THE (OHO AND NANCY JANE SMITH HOMESTEAD SITE (IN EASTERN PARKER COUNTY) HAS
SERVED TO SHOW THE IMPORTANCE Of LOCAL SUPPORT fOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND
THE BENEFIT Of INVOLVING INTERESTED CITIZENS IN THE RECORDING AND PROTECTION OF
IRREPLACEABLE PIECES Of EARLY TEXAS HISTORY.
During the course of field work, local
informants had reported the existence of a
two-room stone-walled fort on the property.
Being skeptical of these reports based
on decades of experience dealing with unsubstantiated
stories about buried gold and
silver and military forts in just about every
Texas county, the authors nevertheless
inspected the reputed fort location but
found no evidence of it. This same area was
surveyed by other experienced field crew
members, and our consensus was that this
was probably just another story or at least
nothing remained to be found. Further
research revealed that the stones from the
"fort" had been sold off by a former land
owner, so the fort would not be visible,
particularly in the very high cover of Bermuda
grass and weeds. However, when a
photograph of the fort was produced, and
the background looked like the upland
The image at the top is a plan map of the Coho and
Nancy Jane Smith Farmstead. At left is a photograph
of the rock fort at the site. The need for an
investigation of the site, located in eastern Parker
County, was brought to the attention of the City by
an avocational archaeologist.
18 HERITAGE * WINTER 1995
