Rock concentration/military campfire (Texas Archaeological Society Field School, 1970; courtesy of Anne Fox).
Rock concentration/military campfire (Texas Archaeological Society Field School, 1970; courtesy of Anne Fox).
Anne Fox (c) 1970 The existence of the Pine Springs Camp (41CU44) had long been known. Located on the eastern slopes of the Guadalupe Mountains, it overlooks the Pinery, one of the stations on the Butterfield Stage Trail. It is also situated near the modern road and the Guadalupe Mountains National Park Visitors' Center. According to local historians, it was one of many army outposts that proliferated in the American West during the 19th century, with detachments from various forts occupying it intermittently both before and after the Civil War. It also housed the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and a goat-herding operation before becoming Park land.
Archaeologically, the Pine Springs Camp was first explored in 1970 by the Texas Archaeological Society field school. Field school members surveyed the site, which is situated on a north-south slope between Upper and Lower Pine Springs. They noted regular concentrations of stone rubble, some of them burned, aligned parallel to the slope, which they tentatively identified as military campfires. The crew mapped these features and an adjacent wagon road that ran from the Butterfield station to Upper Pine Springs. They also collected a few artifacts (bottles, nails), mostly from the rubble concentrations. Historian John Wilson dated these objects to the mid to late 1800s, but as field director Kathleen Gilmore (1970) observed, only excavation would clarify the features’ chronology. That excavation would come 34 years later, under the auspices of the Warriors Archaeology Project.
Sources
A bibliography has been collected for this project.
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