Since no standards existed in the mid-nineteenth century for military buildings for frontier forts and officers were not educated in planning at military schools, commanders drew upon their knowledge of traditional military hierarchies and organization and their memories of forts where they had previously served. As a result, frontier forts in Texas were structured in nearly the exact form of eastern forts, but without fortifications. Essentially, they were residential camps with only minor defensive structures and can more accurately be called cantonments.Almost all the forts were organized around a square or rectangular parade ground, with officers’ quarters situated on one side and company quarters and service buildings (stables, workshops, warehouses, etc.) on the facing side. The other two sides were less consistently structured, but the convention was to place the guardhouse and headquarters on opposite ends with the hospital a short distance away. This attention to precedent must also have proven helpful in orienting new soldiers and officers to the fort. Some uniformity in fort organization may also be attributed to the veto power of district headquarters.Like many other western forts, Texas’s forts lacked stockades or other fortifications, and the name “fort” proved just as misleading in the nineteenth century as it does today due to their absence. Enclosing the amount of land necessary to support posts that frequently housed cavalry units in areas where wood was scarce was prohibitively expensive and unjustifiable as Native Americans rarely attacked forts. Though this decision was essentially a practical one, its architectural impact was significant. Without walls to impress the strength of the military on the viewer, a Texas fort appeared simply as a village or jumble of buildings. With all structures facing inward toward the parade ground, as they would if the fort were stockaded, visitors passed by outbuildings and entered the compound “through the back door.”Especially in the period prior to the Civil War, soldiers were expected to undertake the bulk of a fort’s construction, a budget-cutting measure that proved damaging to morale. Few soldiers were skilled builders, and the quality of the buildings suffered as a result. The arrival of two sawmills at Fort Stockton (FV5) in 1867, for example, must have seemed ironic as the closest lumber was a hundred miles from the post. Due to such circumstances, the army’s costs for transportation in 1850 increased by more than fifteen times its 1844 expenditures. As costs spiraled, commanders at most forts were forced to adapt to local materials and conditions, including the use of rough stonework and adobe, often requiring the hire of local laborers. However, it was not always easy to find local workers with the required skills.The problems created by untrained officers choosing sites and planning buildings became apparent to the military administration. Numerous forts had to be abandoned due to poor site selection and inadequate materials, wasting the time and funds that had already been invested. The first standardized plans for structures at a fort and their optimal organization were published in 1860. This would have been a useful resource, but it was not widely circulated and made little impact on fort construction. A new set of plans was not created until 1872, and it was mostly used at new posts or when new construction was occurring at posts considered permanent. As the majority of Texas’s frontier forts were constructed or reconstructed in the late 1860s and were decommissioned within a decade, these plans were released too late to affect them.—JENNIFER BETSWORTH