Camp Hudson: a small fort made a big difference

Ozona—Back when I was a young’un in the 1950s, I recall locals referring to an old Army fort named Camp Hudson. I saw a marker about a mile south of Baker’s Crossing, just west of State Highway 163. 

The fort was located on San Pedro Creek, a small Devils River creek in central Val Verde County. It was established in June 1857 in the western part of Kinney County. The fort was named after Lt. Walter W. Hudson, who died after being injured in an Indian fight in April 1850.

Camp Hudson was strategically situated on the Old Chihuahua Trail and the Government Trail to protect travelers between San Antonio and El Paso. A post office was established there in 1857.

However, due to Native American resistance to encroachment, very few travelers took the trail in those early years. According to Zenas R. Bliss, a soldier assigned to Camp Hudson for two years, only four or five people not associated with the military traveled the area while he was stationed there.

The walls of the buildings were assembled from an aggregate of river rock, gravel, and lime. The time-consuming construction process made buildings cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Troops from the camp assisted Lieutenant John Bell Hood’s contingent of soldiers after the Devil’s River Battle at Beaver Lake on July 19, 1857. Hood gained fame and the rank of general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. 

In 1859, one of the U.S. Army’s experimental caravans from Camp Verde traveled through Camp Hudson to assess the viability of using camels in the Chihuahuan Desert. Army troops left the camp for service in the Confederate Army in March 1861, and in 1866, the post office was closed.

In October 1867, a band of Comanche and Kiowa attacked a stagecoach from Camp Hudson to Fort Stockton, and the two military escorts were killed. Immediately after the stage attack, two companies of the Ninth Cavalry were sent to Camp Hudson, and by April of 1868, other troops returned to the camp. 

“In April 1871, Camp Hudson was reorganized with three commissioned officers and sixty enlisted men. In March 1876, Lt. Col. George Pearson Buell came to Camp Hudson from Fort Concho with two companies of cavalry. Under his leadership, the post protected newly arrived settlers. 

The troops at Camp Hudson fought with Indians on several occasions and sometimes followed them into Mexico. In April 1876, Lt. Louis Henry Orleman was sent to Camp Hudson to take command of Company B of the Tenth Cavalry. (Barrett – 1931)

By January 1877, Camp Hudson was abandoned and permanently closed, since Indian attacks were no longer a threat.