The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964 Page: 6
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
to be the officers' quarters. They were not built in the manner of
modern barracks. There appeared to have been four large rooms,
two on the first floor and two on the second. In front of the build-
ings were long narrow porches, under which a stairway ran. At
that time, these buildings were dilapidated, and shortly there-
after they disappeared.
In 1936, as a member of the State Centennial committee, the
writer took to Fort Gates three elderly men to assist in the deter-
mination of a proper site for a monument allocated to Coryell
County by the State Centennial Commission. One of the men
was the son of Hugh Sheridan. The other two were Sol Cox
and R. E. Powell. Cox had grown up on land adjoining the old
fort and, as children, he and Sheridan had played in the old
buildings. R. E. Powell had lived on the road from Fort Gates to
Gatesville only a short distance from the fort. The trio described
the fort as consisting of eighteen buildings in all, four of them
quarters for the officers. The fort faced west on to the "Old Mil-
itary Road." As the statement from the War Department indi-
cates, the Leon River was not fordable south of the camp, and
"The Old Military Road" ran west about a mile before it turned
south to a shallow crossing which later became known as Brown's
Crossing, and then passed across what in the 196o's was North
Fort Hood.
Two things about the plan of Fort Gates were of special interest.
The first was the construction of the quarters for the enlisted
men, which was a huge octagon-shaped building right in the
middle of the fort. The walls were made of poles driven into the
ground and chinked with clay. In each of the sides, there was
a huge fireplace that burned cordwood length timbers. There
were no partitions in the building, but there were a number of
tall poles supporting the roof which was made of old-fashioned
broad shingles. The other interesting fact was that the lots and
stables for the horses and mules were south of the camp and
near the spring that furnished the camp water. There must have
been almost an animal for each man in the camp. Modern medi-
cine would probably conclude that the reason for so much sickness
was that "the prevailing south wind" blew over those lots and
the men drank water from an open spring in the same area.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964, periodical, 1964; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101197/m1/24/?rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.