Camp Lawson

Camp Lawson was a military camp located on the Leona Crossing of the Lower Presidio Road (Old San Antonio-Presidio de San Juan Baptista Road) below the junction of the Leona and Frio rivers in modern-day Frio County. Due to its location, the site was a well-known and used camping ground. Camp Lawson was most likely named for Bvt. Brig. Gen. Thomas Lawson, who became surgeon general after the unexpected death of his predecessor, Joseph Lovell, in 1836. Lawson was senior surgeon of the U.S. Army for fifteen years and surgeon general from 1836 to 1861.

Camp Lawson was officially established as a military post on October 27, 1859, when Capt. Arthur Tracy Lee, Lt. Edwin W. H. Read, and forty-five enlisted men of Company C, Eighth U. S. Infantry, marched from Camp Hudson on the Devils River (Val Verde County) to the site. Post returns state that the nearest post office was in San Antonio, approximately seventy miles from Presidio Road. Camp Lawson was accessible by a new road connecting the camp to the nearest military post, Fort Inge, seventy-five miles northwest. A local doctor, William H. Morrow, was assigned to Camp Lawson as a citizen physician and acting assistant surgeon. While at the camp, the quartermaster department employed a conductor of camels, three camel herders, and three teamsters, which suggests that Camp Lawson served as the winter pasturelands of the U.S. Camel Corps, which was attached to the Second U. S. Cavalry, stationed at Camp Verde. Captain Lee and Company C marched to a camp near Laredo the following month, where they were stationed through early February 1860.

On December 20, 1859, Lt. William Bedford Royall and seventy-nine enlisted men of Companies C and G, Second U.S. Cavalry, reported to Camp Lawson. Royall had commanded the company since January 1859. He and his troopers were transferred from Camp Colorado (Coleman County). From Camp Lawson, on January 27, 1860, Royall dispatched Sgt. Alexander McK. Craig and some fourteen men of Company C to pursue a party of American Indians that had committed depredations on the Leona River. Ultimately the troops along with seven citizens overtook and attacked them, killed four, wounded two others, and captured twenty-one horses. Two soldiers were wounded, and Sergeant Craig and his party were credited “for their energy and bravery” in the pursuit and fight.

In February 1860 Company G was ordered to Brownsville, and most members of Company C (Capt. James B. Oakes, Lt. James B. Witherell, and forty-two privates) were transferred up the Leona River to Fort Inge on February 7, 1860. Lieutenant Royall remained at Camp Lawson through May 25, 1860, when he and a twenty-man detachment joined the rest of Company C at Fort Inge.

Camp Lawson was a temporary military camp with no known permanent structures. The location of the camp today would be in the floodplain of the Frio River, where the Leona River converges, just northwest of Interstate 35 at the Frio River Crossing, between Derby and Dilley.