Camp Breckenridge was established near this site in 1862 as part of a Confederate frontier defense line stretching from the Red River to the Rio Grande. It was occupied by a company of the Texas Frontier Regiment, and its posts were a day's horseback ride apart while the area was patrolled regularly. Duties included curbing Indian raids and rounding up draft evaders and renegades. The Confederates were poorly fed and clothed and lacked horses and ammunition. Sharing few of the glories of the war, they nevertheless gave a measure of protection to a vast frontier area at the cost of the lives of not a few of their men. In the Civil War years from 1861 to 1865, Texas made an all-out effort for the Confederacy after voting by more than three to one for secession. Ninety thousand troops, noted for mobility and heroic daring, fought on every battlefront. As an important source of supply and gateway to foreign trade through Mexico, Texas was the storehouse of the South. Camp Breckenridge and other posts on this line were backed by patrols of state rangers, organized militia, and citizens' posses scouting from nearby family forts as part of a two thousand mile frontier and coastline successfully defended by Texans.