Fort Ringgold Historic District

Fort Ringgold, at the southeast edge of Rio Grande City, Texas, was a U.S. Army post begun in 1848 and decommissioned in 1944. Four years later the local school district bought it and turned it into a school campus, which it still is. The historic district covers about 75 acres and includes 41 contributing resources, among them barracks, officers' quarters, a hospital, a bakery, a guardhouse and a flag pole, grouped around a large open parade ground. Most are one- or two-story brick buildings, and many have round-arched verandas that earlier accounts called Moorish. Building campaigns after the Army's 1869 decision to expand the post, in the 1890s and in the 1920s are all represented. The oldest surviving building is the Commandant's Quarters, known locally as the Lee House. The district was listed for its role in military activity along the Lower Rio Grande and for its architecture, despite later school-era alterations.