24 November 2019
We had a half a day after arriving here at Fort Davis (the town) so we went up the road apiece to Fort Davis (the Fort). It was a cold and very windy day as we head our way to the visitor center, after of course, our obligatory “selfie”. Oh, wait, the selfie improved drastically by leaving one of us out…
Fort Davis, 1854 to 1891, located in the rugged Davis Mountains of west Texas is one of America’s best surviving examples of an Indian Wars frontier military posts. It was strategically located to protect emigrants, mail coaches, and freight wagons on the Trans-Pecos portion of the San Antonio-El Paso Road, the Chihuahua Trail, and to control Comanche and Apache Trails.
After the Civil War, the “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 24th and 25th U.S. Infantry and the 9th and 10th U.S. Cavalry were established at Ft Davis.
Today, twenty-four roofed buildings and over 100 ruins and foundations are part of Fort Davis National Historic Site. Five of the historic buildings have been refurnished to the 1880s.
It was a kool look into the rough and tumble past. It was cold so we wasted no time exploring and moving on.
My Inner Signal Corps 
We left the fort drove 15 miles up the road to the McDonald Observatory located on Mount Locke in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. They observe the stars and moons and stuff…
Built from a $1 million donation in 1929, the then-unnamed Otto Struve Telescope was dedicated on May 5, 1939, and at that time was the second largest telescope in the world. McDonald Observatory was operated under contract by the University of Chicago until the 1960s, when control was transferred to the University of Texas at Austin.
WDILT ?? In 1969 Apollo 11 placed a 1 meter square mirror on the surface of the moon at a certain angle so McDonald Observatory could shoot a laser (Laser Ranging System (MLRS)) to the mirror to determine the distance from the moon to the earth. The moon is one and a half inches farther from the earth every year. Who knew?
I also learned that they do not put their eyes to the eyepiece of a telescope. Everything is all computerized and see on monitors, who knew…very cool.
(oh, yeah, WDILT= What Did I Learn Today?
