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Fort Belknap director provides update on fort renovations, improvements

Fri, 08/28/2020 - 2:21 pm
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    The beginning of timeline which was created for the Fort Belknap museum inside their new display cases. The timeline starts at 1851 when the fort was founded and explains the fort was originally located around Newcastle. The improvements at the fort were made possible through a hotel/motel tax on the area inside the county not in an incorporated city. (Leader photo by Mike Williams)
editor@grahamleader.com

Fort Belknap Director Jim Hammond gave a construction and renovation update Tuesday regarding the fort. Hammond went over the changes being made inside the Fort Belknap museum and on various aspects of the fort including the grape arbor.

Hammond said COVID-19 helped with visitors not coming out to the museum for a month so he could work on bigger renovations. He said two of the of the biggest issues the fort had before October 2019 was that the fort had many artifacts which had nothing to do with the fort or Young County and the museum had nothing inside showing the purpose of the fort.

Museum improvements

Hammond said the fort included a timeline at the museum which starts at 1851 when the fort was founded while explaining the original location of the fort was around Newcastle and moves into the different units stationed at the fort. Even though it was not an official military installation for the confederacy during the Civil War, Hammond said the period after 1859 was included in the timeline.

“We do know that the Texas Rangers were there. We do know the confederate soldiers were there, but I like to interpret that in part of the timeline of the existence of Fort Belknap. After the Civil War is over with in 1867, the federal troops come back out there and were in Reconstruction (of) Texas and they are there for a few months. They split off (and) they create Fort Richardson and Fort Griffin out of the soldiers that were at Fort Belknap,” Hammond said.

For the rest of the story, see the Aug. 29 edition of The Graham Leader.