Fort Lancaster was established in 1855 on a dramatic bluff to guard the Pecos River crossing of the San Antonio–El Paso military road. An infantry installation, it became a permanent fort in 1856, garrisoned with 150 soldiers of companies H and K of the 1st U.S. Infantry. The army’s experimental camel corps passed through the fort in 1855. The fort was abandoned by U.S. Army forces in 1861, briefly garrisoned by Confederate troops, and reoccupied in 1867 by Buffalo Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 9th Cavalry, who successfully defended the fort against an attack by some 400 Kickapoos and Lipán Apaches, only the second time a U.S. fort in Texas was attacked. Fort Lancaster was decommissioned in 1873. Ruins of twenty-nine stone buildings around the parade ground still exist, the most prominent being a chimney of the enlisted men’s barracks. A museum and visitors’ center were added after 2007 and expanded in 2015.