The Phantom Hill Road was part of a string of roads built in the early 1850s to con nect a line of forts between the Red River and the Rio Grande. The forts were built to protect a few remote settlements and travel routes to California, where the gold rush was on.
According to a map in J.W. Williams' book 'Old Texas Trails,' the road that cut through Lampasas County ran more or less in a straight line from Fort Croghan in Burnet County north through Lampasas, Mills, Brown and Callahan counties to Fort Phantom Hill near Abilene.
The fort was built on the Clear Fork of the Brazos, not far from Elm Creek. A much better idea would have been the one suggested - actually, ordered - by Gen. Wil liam G. Belknap, which would have put the fort on Pecan Bayou, where the water was more plentiful and reliable and the landscape not quite so foreboding.
As it was, Elm Creek was more often than not a creek in name only. The Clear Fork water was brackish. Scurvy, fever, dysentery and pneumonia were rampant among the soldiers unfortunate enough to be stationed there.
Fort Phantom Hill was never officially named. It was usually referred to as the 'Post on the Clear Fork of the Brazos.' The name is thought to derive from the fact that the hill itself appears to vanish when it is approached.
During the early days of the fort, the first old Army trail cut across what was then the West Texas frontier, connecting Fort Groghan and Fort Phantom Hill. Records were scant in those days, but Williams and others have pieced together enough information to give this road its historical due.
'A number of land surveys in present Callahan and Brown counties were made in 1852,' Williams wrote in his book. 'Several of these were crossed by the road from Fort Phantom Hill to Fort Croghan, a branch of which reached Fort Gates.'
This is why histories often refer to a couple of separate roads as the Phantom Hill Road. The road out of Fort Gates, on a bend of the Leon River near Gatesville, was known as the Old Military Road, and popularly as the old Corn Road. The latter name was given because corn would fall from supply wagons and sprout, thus making it one of the easiest trails to follow in those days.
The branch of the Old Military Road that went to Fort Phantom Hill is usually referred to as the Fort Gates-Fort Phantom Hill Road, leading to the modern-day confusion over which road was really the Fort Phantom Hill Road.
'In none of these surveys was there mention of any road that came southward from any fort other than Phantom Hill,' Williams continued. 'In 1853, however, the notes of numerous surveys contained language about a road that ran from Fort Belknap (in Young County, near Newcastle) to Fort Groghan in Burnet County, and from Fort Belknap to Austin.
'Careful study of records reveal that this latter road was identical with the Phantom Hill-Fort Croghan road from many miles. Obviously, the Fort Phantom Hill-Croghan Road was made first.'
A historical marker erected in 1974 notes Phantom Hill Road as the first road in Lampasas County. The marker is located about two miles west of Lampasas on State Highway 190.
'Supply trains of up to 24 wagons drawn by mules, horse and oxen passed along this route to the frontier fort,' the marker reads in part. 'The road was used primarily by the military until the abandonment of Fort Phantom Hill on April 6, 1854, but also served as a thoroughfare for early settlers and continued in that capacity until after the Civil War.
'About 1870, traffic passing through the area was diverted to Senterfitt Stage Station (1.5 miles SW), and this section of the road abandoned. Several isolated segments of the Phantom Hill Road remain in use in the county, and physical evidence of the Emy's Creek Crossing (200 yards S) still exists.'
What's left of the old fort is on private property. Poet Larry Chittenden wrote these lines about the ruins:
'Where the twilight loves to linger, e'er night's sable robes are cast
Round grim-ruined, spectral chimneys, telling stories of the past
There upon an airy mesa, close beside a whispering rill
There today you'll find the ruins of Old Fort Phantom Hill.'
