Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Torres brothers of Fort Stockton
October 5, 2005

“History records the major actors of events, but pays no attention to those who hauled the armies’ supplies and grew their food and fodder.” We all know about Fort Griffin, Fort Chadbourne, Fort Concho, Fort Lancaster, Fort Stockton, and Fort Davis. Folks representing soldiers and families of soldiers will be presenting living history at Hogan Park on October 29, 2005, but not teamsters that drove the supply wagons, or the farmers that raised the food for the soldiers.

Thanks to Clayton Williams Senior in his “Indians and Settlers" and in Carl Raht’s "Romance of the Davis Mountains and Big Bend Country”, however, the support that one important family from Fort Stockton gave to the soldiers and to the settlers of the region can be documented. A great grandniece of Cesario later wrote of the family in Southwestern Historical Quarterly.

Cesario, Bernardo, and Juan Torres, originally from near Uvalde, owned land near Fort Stockton as early as 1867, when it was reported they owned 4000 head of livestock, and had built the first acequias (water canals) that distributed the water of Comanche Spring to the growing number of farmers. Williams mentions that the huge cottonwoods and old adobe houses of the family compound a few miles northeast of the spring were still standing in the late 1970s. In passing, I have asked a resident or two of Fort Stockton for information about its present condition, but I have not learned how it has fared – maybe a reader can help me out! (Nor do I know if any of the descendants of the brothers are still in the area, but I would love to hear more stories about the family.)

The Torres family began working as freighters for the army at Fort Clark near Brackettville in the early 1850s. When Fort Stockton was erected in 1859, the brothers were part of the “background,” unnoticed by early chroniclers. With the Civil War, the forts of the region were abandoned, after General Sibley’s ill-fated invasion of New Mexico. Traffic on the trail to Chihuahua City or El Paso ceased, but when the U.S. Army returned in 1867, Cesario Torres was listed on a passenger list of a mail coach that arrived at Fort Lancaster a few hours after an Indian attack. In 1869 he was listed as a landowner at Fort Stockton.

In the census of 1870 the Torres farms along Comanche Creek were listed. In 1872 he was a justice of the peace., and from 1876 to 1884 was a county commissioner. By 1878 Cesario Torres had a 600-acre farm west of present day Iraan (where he had built a dam on the Pecos River and a 14-mile long acequia to Camp Melvin to the east), and a 1400-acre farm along Comanche Creek. He employed 50 families at the time. The ranch along Comanche Creek became known as the 7D ranch. In 1886 Torres sold the ranch.

In 1882, his brother Bernardo founded the town of Eagle Pass, which became Langtry, of Judge Roy Bean fame. For all of the development work that the Torres brothers had done along the Pecos River they were awarded 37 sections of land where the Pecos River met the Rio Grande. Such success did not come without troubles, however, for Williams mentions at least 4 Indian raids on their farms from 1872 to 1878, with Cesario receiving an arm wound during one.

Such a dry recitation of facts does not give a good sense of what the Torres brothers did or what they endured. When they built the rock dam on the Pecos River upstream from Camp Melvin, they hauled hundres of wagonloads of rocks from a cliff to the river. To dig acequias in the hard west Texas soils for miles and miles is absolutely awe-inspiring. Despite the racism inherent in the society of the old west, the Torres brothers became part of the power structure of the settlement.

One of my references states that the Torres brothers brought the concept of a fandango to west Texas – a secular celebration that was unrelated to the Saints’ Days that occur in Catholic communities. It helps me visualize them – strong happy men, full of joy and vigor, and tougher than a sunblasted cowhide baking in the sun. I salute them – they are heroes to me!