Thursday, July 24, 2025

another trip out

 I had Annual Bloodwork today, which kind of eats the morning - first of all, it's FASTING bloodwork, so you can't have breakfast. 

I normally eat around 7. My appointment was at 8:30 and it was closer to 8:50 when I got called in. I did run and get a big breakfast (eggs, grits, pancakes, sausage, and I suspect sausage no longer agrees with me). 

I sat around for a while at home, but midday decided that I needed to go out and do something. It seemed too late to consider driving to Sherman for anything. So I decided, even though it was hot, to go to Fort Washita and at least look around a little bit.

I had been there around 2007; I remember it because it was the flood year and I was trying to find alternate places to do forest sampling because all the places I normally took students were flooded out. In the intervening years, one of the old buildings (one of the barracks) was burned in an arson incident, and then more recently it transferred from the state (during our budget failure in 2016) to the Chickasaw tribe, who now run it.

It's kind of an unusual fort; the original purpose was to protect the "removed" people (the Choctaw and Chickasaw people moved here from Mississippi and Alabama) but I think it also played some role in the Civil War, it was occupied for a while by Confederate forces.

there's not a whole lot left, most of the buildings are merely the foundations

 


There are a couple buildings still standing, or that have been extensively restored. There is the "Chaplain's House" which is now a small museum and is the headquarters (and they have a very small gift shop). 


 There's also a log cabin, I think this was lived in by Douglas H Cooper. There's also a reconstructed room in the cabin


 

They have it protected by Plexiglas so it was hard to get a good photo without reflections.

The Chickasaw people have put up some really detailed informational signs, I do not think there was anything like this before they started caring for it in 2016. The signs add a lot.

 


They also have some displays inside the headquarters - there are mannequins with uniforms from the various eras of the fort, and a display of flags, and a model of the fort itself.

 


 

There are also drawers of artifacts found on the grounds - old pipes, and a couple of locks, and some bits of pottery, and also arrowheads, and the docent there said he thought those might date back even before the Chickasaw and Choctaw people being here - so back to the Kiowas and even maybe some of the Mississippian peoples. 

I didn't walk around as much as I might have wanted to because the heat index was over 100. I did walk as far as the west barracks (which were occupied until the 20th century, and then fell into ruin) and the south barracks (which were the ones damaged by arson in 2010)


 
It was interesting and I'd like to go back at a time when it's more comfortable to walk around more

It's very still out there, except for birds and cicadas and the wind - you don't hear any "modern human" noises:


 

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