The first Anglo-American settlers arrived in the area in the mid-1850s, often taking refuge from Indian attacks in fortified family dwellings before and during the Civil War. The frontier posts established by the U.S. Army in the late 1860s, farther west than the prewar defenses, protected settlements and travel routes and increased stability. Camp Wilson, renamed Fort Griffin, was established in 1867 on high ground above the Clear Fork of the Brazos River by Lieutenant Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis with four companies of the Sixth United States Cavalry. It played a primary role as a base of supply and operations in the Red River War of 1874–1875, the virtual extinction of the southern herd of buffalo, and the final subjugation of the powerful Comanche, Kiowa, and southern Cheyenne Indians that opened the Texas Panhandle and South Plains to settlement.
The town of Griffin grew up on the flats between the fort and the Brazos River. With its raucous buffalo hunters, gamblers, cowboys, and outlaws, Griffin attracted the likes of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp in the 1870s. It was designated the temporary county seat when Shackelford County was formed in 1874, but it was soon displaced by centrally located Albany. Removal of the Indians and the construction of the railroads eliminated the need for the fort, which was decommissioned in 1881. Without its immediate economic base, Griffin too vanished, and businesses moved to Albany, which received its railroad connection that year. A few stone ruins at the fort and several reconstructed wood structures in town are all that remain of a place that was, for less than ten years, one of the most important sites on the transitory frontier.
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