WELCOME TO FORT TEJON A Brief Overview of Fort Tejon's History Text by Joseph H. Engbeck, Jr. Historical Review by George Stammerjohan
Fort Tejon is located in Grapevine Canyon on Interstate Highway Five, the main route between California's great central valley and Southern California. The fort was established to protect and control the Indians who were living on the Sebastian Indian Reservation, and to protect both the reservation Indians and white settlers from raids by the wide-ranging and rather warlike Paiutes, Chemehuevi, Mojave and other Indian groups of the desert region to the south and east. Fort Tejon was first garrisoned by the United States Army on August 10, 1854 and abandoned ten years later on September 11, 1864.
Early History of the Area
The Native Americans who lived in this area prior to the establishment of Fort Tejon are generally referred to as the Emigdiano. They were an island group of the Chumash people who lived along the Santa Barbara Channel coastline. Unlike their coastal relatives, however, the Emigdiano avoided contact with European explorers and settlers and were never brought into one of the missions or even incorporated into the Sebastian Indian Reservation. One of their villages was located at Tecuya Creek, north of Castac Lake. Another village, Sasau, was on the north shore of the lake, while a third and still larger village, Lapau, was located at the bottom of Grapevine Canyon. European explorers and settlers rarely passed through Grapevine Canyon during the early years of Spanish and Mexican rule, but in 1806, a Spanish army officer, Lieutenant Francisco Ruiz, named it Canada de las Uvas (Canyon of the Grapes). In 1842, Jose Maria Covarrubias of Santa Barbara applied to th governor of Alta California for a land grant, and in 1843 he was given title to the area he called Rancho Castac. He never lived on his rancho, but grazed cattle and hired Indian laborers to work there. In 1853, President Millard Fillmore appointed Edward F. Beale to the position of Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California and Nevada and sent him to California to head off further confrontations between the Indians and the many gold seekers and other settlers who were pouring into California. After studying the situation, Beale decided that the best approach was to set up a large Indian reservation at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and to invite displaced Indian groups to settle there. In order to implement his plan, Beale requested a federal appropriation of $500,000 and military support for the 75,000 acre reservation he had selected at the foot of Tejon Pass. Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock, commander of the Pacific Division of the U.S. Army, supported Beale's plan and agreed to set up a military post on or near the Indian Reservation. Both Beale and his successor, Thomas J. Henley, wanted the fort to be near, but not actually on the Indian reservation, and so in August 1854, Major J.L. Donaldson, a quartermaster officer, chose the present site in Canada de las Uvas. The site was handsome and promised adequate wood and water. It was just 17 miles southwest of the Sebastian Indian Reservation, and it was right on what Major Donaldson was convinced would become the main route between the central valley and Southern California. On August 10, 1854, First Lieutenant Thomas F. Castor led a detachment of Company A. First U.S. Dragoon, into camp. The rest of Company A arrived a few days later. Construction of military facilities began immediately and continued on and off for the next six years. Since Fort Tejon was in no danger of being attacked, it was set up as a garrison for troops and not as a defensive installation. Thus there were no walls around the post and the military had the luxury of spreading out across the canyon. Ultimately, more than 40 buildings were constructed to support military operations, plus two structures for the post sutler, a civilian who was authorized to sell goods to the soldiers on the post. In 1858, the Overland Mail Company began using Fort Tejon as a way station on its main overland route between St. Louis and San Francisco. In July 1856, headquarters of the First U.S. Dragoons was ordered to Fort Tejon from Fort Union, New Mexico. It arrived in mid-December after a long desert march. The dragoons continued to be stationed at Fort Tejon except for one brief period in 1857 and 1858 when they were sent off to Oregon. During their absence a detachment of the Third Artillery, serving as infantry, was stationed at Fort Tejon. But the dragoons soon returned and the post was again garrisoned by dragoons, generally two companies of them - 100 to 120 men in all.
The Camel Experiment
During the 1850's, the U.S. Army experimented with camels in the hope of developing improved and more economical transport across the wide reaches of the arid west. Fort Tejon played a small role in this experiment after 1857 when Edward F. Beale brought 22 camels to Samuel Bishop's ranch near the fort. He had used the camels to carry forage and supplies for the road surveying party he had been commissioned to lead from Fort Defiance, New Mexico Territory to the Colorado River. The following year, Beale used the camels once again to haul supplies for the construction crews who were marking and improving the wagon road that had been surveyed the year before. The apparent success of this camel experiment caused the U.S. Army to ask that the camels be turned over to them at Fort Tejon. The War Department refused the request, but on November 17, 1859, Bishop brought the camels to Fort Tejon and left them to be cared for through the winter. They were turned out once again to graze on Bishop's ranch in the spring of 1860 after Brevet Major James H. Carlton refused to use them for his Mojave expedition. In September, Captain Winfield S. Hancock, Assistant Quartermaster in Los Angeles, experimented with camels as a way of reducing the expense of messenger service between Los Angeles and the recently established Fort Mojave on the Colorado River. Unfortunately, one of the "express camels" died near the Fishponds (modern Barstow). and the experiment was considered a failure. It was noted that while the camels were cheaper to maintain, they were really no faster than the two-mule buckboard in service under contract with the Army. Early in 1861, three camels were used to carry provisions for the California-Nevada boundary survey under J.R.N. Owen. The expedition ran into severe difficulties, though the camels performed well and may even have saved the lives of Owen and his men. Afterward, the camels were turned over to Captain Hancock in Los Angeles where they were soon joined by those that had been left at Fort Tejon. Eventually, the camels were taken to the Benicia Arsenal and sold at auction.
The Civil War Years
Abandonment of Fort Tejon was discussed as early as 1855 by various individuals in that the fort was "useless and expensive." It was "located in a cold, bleak, inhospitable and worthless region of the country rocked by earthquakes, unsuitable for the habitation of the white man and deserted by the Indians." It was said that the remote and isolated garrison at Fort Tejon cost $55,000 more to maintain than a similar operation would cost in Los Angeles or San Bernardino. In 1861, the Civil War added new reasons for the abandonment of Fort Tejon. Veteran fighting men of the First Dragoons were badly needed in the East, and troops were also needed in San Bernardino, El Monte and other communities throughout California where Southern sympathizers were known to be present in numbers. In June 1861, despite protests from local ranchers, the dragoons were transferred away from Fort Tejon and with their departure the civilian population melted away overnight. Many of the dragoons from Fort Tejon later fought - and some died - amid the tragic violence of America's Civil War. Nine officers who served at Fort Tejon during its active period achieved the rank of general during or after the war. In the summer of 1862, about a year after the abandonment of Fort Tejon, sporadic violence broke out between white settlers and the Indians of the Owens Valley. Several lives were lost and unsettled conditions continued through the Winter. The following spring, three cavalry companies of the First California Volunteers were sent into the Owens Valley. They rounded up about 1,100 Indians and took them to the Sebastian Reservation. In August 1863, several hundred of these Indians were moved from the reservation to Fort Tejon, which was then being occupied by the California Volunteers. The Indians were forced to remain in Grapevine Canyon until the following summer although little or no food, clothing or other support was given them. Starvation, disease and desertion thinned their ranks during the winter of 1863 before orders were finally received in August 1864 that called for the Indians to be placed on the Tule River Indian Reservation east of Visalia. Shortly after that, orders came through from Department of the Pacific Army Headquarters in San Francisco that Fort Tejon should be abandoned once again. On the morning of September 11, 1864, the troops left for Drum Barracks in Wilmington near Los Angeles, and Fort Tejon, at least as an active military outpost became a matter of history.
After the War
Even before Fort Tejon was abandoned by the U.S. Army, Edward F. Beale began to purchase land in the area. He and a handful of associates acquired the Sebastian Indian Reservation lands when the federal government abandoned that project, and Beale continued to acquire land in the area throughout the 1860's. Eventually he came to own an enormous tract -tens of thousands of acres - of mountainous, semi-arid land in the Tehachapi and Emigdio Mountains. Beale hired literally hundreds of people to grow various crops and tend great herds of sheep and cattle on what he called the Tejon Ranch. In addition to the Mexican and American employees, there were some 300 Indian workers on the ranch, many of them natives of the Tehachapi and other nearby mountain areas and most of them one-time residents of the reservation. Beale hired these Indians and their families to work on the ranch and also gave them five-acre plots of land for homesites and personal farming ventures. The adobe buildings that had served the army at Fort Tejon and others on the old Sebastian Indian Reservation were used as residences, stables and storehouses. Roving bands of outlaws, drought and changing economic conditions caused many a difficulty, but Beale nevertheless managed to make a fortune out of wool and other ranch products so that after about 1870 he was able to spend roughly half of each year in Washington, D,C. where he acquired and lived in Decatur House, perhaps the capital city's most impressive private residence after the White House itself. He took an active role in politics and was one of President Grant's most trusted advisors. In 1872, the success of Beale's acquisition and development strategy for the ranch, including his program for the Indians, led the distinguished editor and writer, Charles Nordhoff, to describe the Tejon Ranch as perhaps "the most magnificent estate in a single hand in America." After Beale's death in April 1893, the 269,215-acre ranch continued in operation under highly skilled managers until 1912 when it was acquired by a group of investors led by Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Under this new ownership, the ranch was further expanded and then turned over to a corporation, the Tejon Ranch Company, which was incorporated in 1936 and continues to this day.
Creation of the State Park
In 1939, at the urging of Kern County citizen groups, five acres, including the old parade ground and the foundations and other remnants of the original adobe buildings at Fort Tejon, were gift deeded to the people of California by the Tejon Ranch Corporation for state park purposes. Restoration work on the adobe buildings began in 1949. An additional 200 acres were purchased from the Tejon Ranch Corporation in 1954. Structural restoration of the original barracks building and reconstruction of the officers quarters was completed in 1957. These two buildings and one other century-old adobe are authentic and visible reminders of Fort Tejon as it looked during the 1850s and 1860s when it was an active frontier military post. (link to park website)
Additional information on Fort Tejon may be found in "A View of the Ridge Route Vol. II - the Fort Tejon Era Available at the book store