Van Horn and Fort Davis

  Van Horn, Texas, United States
Saturday, October 4, 2008

Just 25 miles north of Alpine was the next stop on our trip: Fort Davis. Built in the early 1800s on a strategic location on an old Apache trail, backed by mountains, it served to protect convoys travelling between San Antonio (400 miles away) and El Paso (200 miles away) - and later also those going out to California during the gold rush.

Fort Davis, officers' homes

Fort Davis Officer's home, against the mountain

Protection from who? Indians and bandits. But in reality, they had to do little in the way of fighting over the course of the 50-odd years that the fort was in use.


Today, some of the buildings have been reconstructed and even refurnished to give a good idea of life in the fort. There are soldiers barracks, officers homes and servant quarters to visit.

Inside Fort Davis soldiers' barracks

Mark testing a soldier's bunk

Also on site and currently undergoing restoration is the Fort's hospital where you can take a look at an old, mule-drawn ambulence and read about what it was that killed soldiers in those days. And no, they didn't die in battle much - some were shot by themselves or their comrades, but most keeled over from diseases like TB or succumbed to the long-term effects of poor hygene or a dodgy tummy.

Fort Davis hospital

Fort Davis ambulence

Record of soldiers' deaths

Between the mountain backdrop, the reconstructed buildings, the many ruins that have been excavated but not (yet) restored and the bugle sounds emanating every now and then from loudspeakers around the grounds, it is a pretty atmospheric place. Less impressive, sadly, was the little video about the fort: narrated, heaven knows why, by an NBA basketball player (Mark was quick to identify him as Kareem Abdul Jabbar) that had seemingly only just learnt to read and had certainly not yet learnt to distinguish between different sentences or add any dramatic tones to his voice.

another desert resident

As we wandered around the Fort, we had our first close encounter with the dangerous desert wildlife. A reddy-brown snake, at least a metre long and quite fat, spotted us as we walked past the officers quarters. Once it spotted us, it dashed away for the shadows underneath the porch of one of the homes and as it sped off, we spotted it and made a dash in the opposite direction. At least this wildlife was in agreement with us that we shouldn't get up close and personal. When we were heading off, we went into the visitor's centre again to report our sighting...


us: "we just spotted a snake under one of the buildings across the yard"


nutty park ranger (being nutty seems to be part of the job description, but they are all nutty in a friendly, endearing, tree-hugging way): "lucky you!"


us: "if you say so!"


She produced a folder with photos of all manner of desert wildlife and asked us to pick out "our" snake. We found a reddy-brown looking one and decided that must have been it. A Red Racer we were told. Not tooooo dangerous, but then I am not sure that it is not a case of "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" either. We were pleased to have made an impression on the park ranger at least who seemed absolutely thrilled for us so we kept smiling uncertainly as we headed off to our next destination.


That destination was McDonald Observatory, high on a hill another 15 miles or so on from Fort Davis. A brochure told us that they had "star parties" here every evening where you do some group star-gazing under the guidance of an expert - possibly another wonderfully nutty ranger. But the weather gods were toying with us.

McDonald Observatory

Undecisive as to whether to treat us to clear night skies or cloud the whole lot over, blocking the stars from our view. It was only mid-afternoon, but the clouds were starting to gather, rolling in from the North and the lady at the visitor centre was hesitant to assure us that they would roll on by. We reflected upon our past experience - and luck - when it comes to relying on the weather for astronomical purposes we have a bad track record: in 2000, we were atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii to enjoy the sunset and stars next to the observatory that sits up there on a spot chosen because it has only 10 cloudy days a year. And yes, it was cloudy. Freak snow storm or something stupid like that. So we made the only decision that we could, based on the facts and decided not to hang around. So much still to see. And once we had driven up to take a look inside on of the big McDonald telescopes, we headed off north for Van Horn, a little town from which we could set out the next day to Guadalupe Mountains National Park.


This must have really been our lucky day though - clouds aside - because we had a second encounter with American wildlife as we drove on north from the observatory: a black bear. This one was less quick to run away. In fact, it would not be doing any more running. It had become road kill. We sped on past, not wishing to add pictures of dead animals to our photo collection. Who knows, perhaps we will meet a live one somewhere else on our travels - then we can convey our condolences for the loss of its cousin.