Historic Structures Report, Part I

Utley, Robert; Pope, Charles; Gann, Robert; Koue, A

Fort Davis was established in October 1854 by Bvt. Maj. Gen. Persifor F. Smith, commander of the Department of Texas. It occupied successively two locations. By the time of its abandonment in 1891, Fort Davis consisted of nearly 60 buildings plus the extensive corrals, shops, and stables of the quartermaster and cavalry. Fort Davis' historical significance lays with its status as the best surviving example of a typical American frontier military outpost. Because of the complex problem of historic structures rehabilitation presented by Fort Davis, differing in many ways from anything the National Park Service has attempted before, it was the consensus of the authors that at this stage of planning something more was required than called for by the guidelines for preparing Part I historic structures reports. The guidelines were devised for the problem of rehabilitating a single building, while at Fort Davis the problem is to rehabilitate several dozen and integrate them into an authentic pattern in which the design of the total complex, as well as of separate selected units, emerges. Therefore, in addition to brief statements of proposed policy and technique required by the guidelines (and numbered to correspond with the numbered headings in the guidelines), the report includes two somewhat voluminous supporting appendices. These are intended to provide basic data for future planning and to enable the reader to visualize the situation at Fort Davis and appreciate the problems that confront us in rehabilitating it.

Historic Structures Report, Part I

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