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Camp Pecan LbNA #60893

Owner:Baby Bear
Plant date:Feb 17, 2012
Location:
City:Cross Plains
County:Callahan
State:Texas
Boxes:1
Found by: Stepping By Faith
Last found:Feb 18, 2017
Status:FFFFF
Last edited:Feb 17, 2012
Difficulty: Easy
Distance to microbox: 10 yards

*** Part of Old Forts of Texas Series ***

The Camp Pecan box is located near the original location of this frontier fort. Here is the history from the Handbook of Texas:
CAMP PECAN. Camp Pecan, on Pecan Bayou in Callahan County, was one of eighteen frontier ranger posts selected by Col. James M. Norris in March 1862 along a winding defense line extending some 500 miles from the Red River in North Texas to the Rio Grande at what is now Eagle Pass. Colonel Norris was the newly appointed commander of what has come to be known as the Frontier Regiment, a regiment of approximately 1,050 rangers authorized by the Ninth Texas Legislature on December 21, 1861, to replace the retiring Confederate garrisons along the frontier and to protect northern and western frontier settlements in Texas from Comanche and Kiowa Indian raids. Camp Pecan was located approximately eight miles north of Camp Colorado, a well established, former Union frontier fort garrisoned at that time by the First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, a Confederate unit. The camp was located where the road from Camp Colorado to Camp Cooper, another Confederate facility, crossed Pecan Bayou.

Camp Pecan, along with Camp Collier in Brown County, was originally one of two camps along Norris' 500 mile cordon placed under the command of Capt. Frank M. Collier, commander of one of the nine 115–125 man companies of the Frontier Regiment. Half of Captain Collier's command was at Camp Pecan and half at Camp Collier. Scouting patrols would leave Camp Pecan every other day traveling south to Camp Collier and then returning the next day. On those same alternating days, patrols would leave Camp Pecan traveling north to Camp Salmon. The patrols sought signs of Indian incursions that might threaten frontier communities. When Captain Collier sustained a back injury and resigned his command in July 1862, company elections at both Camp Pecan and Camp Collier selected former Sgt. Maj. James Joseph Callan as the new captain.

In April 1862 Callan of the state-sponsored Frontier Regiment had relieved Capt. James M. Holmsley, Confederate commander of the First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, of command at Camp Colorado. Holmsley's unit was being redeployed. On October 27, 1862, Colonel Norris moved his regimental headquarters from its summer location at Camp Collier to Camp Colorado. He also ordered Captain Callan to remove all equipment from both Camp Pecan and Camp Collier and to consolidate both halves of his command at Camp Colorado. Camp Colorado remained the regimental headquarters for the Frontier Regiment until its inclusion into the Confederate Army on March 1, 1864.

E. L. Deaton, who wrote the classic 1894 book, Indian Fights on the Texas Frontier, comprising the most definitive eyewitness accounts of the Indian wars on the North Central Texas frontier from 1857 to 1873, mentions in his book that he served at Camp Pecan in 1862. No trace remains today of Camp Pecan. A historical marker erected in 1963 on the courthouse square in Baird, county seat of Callahan County, commemorates its location approximately twenty miles to the southeast.

It was raining, and the camp should have been somewhere along CR4, which is a dirt road, so box is "close" to where the camp was, but wish I could have gotten to Pecan Bayou off CR4.

Directions:
From Cross Plains, go west on Hwy 36, left on FM2707, right on FM2287 to CR410 intersection. Pull over on side of road.

To the Microbox:
Walk across CR410 to tree. Work your way to the base of the first tree and find box under flat rock.