Fort Davis depended on extensive administrative and logistical support as well as military duty. Soldiers and civilian employees guarded the mail, built roads and telegraph lines, scouted for water, and searched for Apaches or Comanches, while critical support work centered in this area of the fort. Handwritten reports and muster rolls, supply ordering, and accountability were essential at a remote frontier garrison where a one-way supply trip from San Antonio could take up to six weeks, making poor management disruptive or disastrous. The commissary provided food and rations, the bakery produced more than 500 18-ounce loaves of bread per day, the largest infantry barracks housed two companies, and the guardhouse with four rooms and 8 cells also served as a fire station and guard staging area. Post headquarters handled administration, orders, courts-martial, and paperwork; the post chapel served as a social center for church services, dances, theatricals, a library, and a school; shared officers' quarters housed junior, non-commissioned, and visiting officers; small quarters housed some married enlisted men; and the ordnance sergeant's quarters and signal and telegraph office sent and received telegrams and later housed the post's first telephones, leased from the American Bell Company.
