Camp Cooper

 

 Robert E. Lee

Camp Cooper was established as an army outpost attached to the Comanche reservation. All other tribes were on the lower reservation to which Fort Belknap was attached. This was a particularly important post to be designated as a camp which explains why Robert E. Lee was given command there during the 1850s.

John Chadbourne Irwin earned his middle name by being the first child born in Fort Chadbourne. In his old age, standing by the old forge from Camp Cooper, which has been shot full of holes by buffalo hunters. 1930s photo from Ben O. Grant, Early History of Shackelford County. Courtesy Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene, Texas, and Dean Lawrence Clayton.

After the Civil War the army built Fort Griffin to assume the duties once delegated to Fort Phantom Hill and Camp Cooper.