Fort McIntosh

Fort McIntosh is a military post district on a bluff above the Rio Grande in Laredo, Texas. The Army occupied the site from 1849 until 1947, and work on a star-shaped earthen fort began in December 1853. Ruins of that fort remain, along with a stone magazine and a 1930s WPA wall that now marks the district boundary. Surviving buildings from the 1870s to 1890s include the quartermaster's storehouse, the commissary, non-commissioned staff quarters, Victorian-detailed officers' quarters, one of three 1880 barracks, a chapel, a guardhouse and the 1885 post hospital. The fort guarded the Mexican frontier, saw Union, Confederate and later Army garrisons, and in 1911 was the starting point of a cross-country test flight of a Wright Type B airplane to Eagle Pass. After the fort closed, the land passed to Laredo Junior College, which uses many of the buildings and has built new classrooms on the former parade ground.