Fort Inge

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Fort Inge Archeological Site
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
The site of Fort Inge with Mount Inge in the background.
Location:	Uvalde County, Texas, USA
Nearest city:	Uvalde
Coordinates:	29°10′45″N 99°45′57″W / 29.17917, -99.76583Coordinates: 29°10′45″N 99°45′57″W / 29.17917, -99.76583
Built/Founded:	1849
Added to NRHP:	September 12, 1985
NRHP Reference#:	85002298
Governing body:	Uvalde County

Fort Inge was a frontier fort in Uvalde County, Texas (USA) established as Camp Leona on March 13, 1849. The fort served as a base for troops assigned to protect the southern overloand mail route from indian raids. The camp was renamed Fort Inge in honor of Lieutenant Zebulon M. P. Inge a West Point officer killed in the Mexican–American War.

There were two wooden barracks with thatched roofs that quartered the soldiers assigned to the fort. There was also a large limestone building that served as commissary and later a hospital. The fort was surrounded on three sides by a stacked stone wall added sometime around the Civil War. The wall was dismantled in 1874 and the stone used to build a dam on the Leona River. The wall was relaid along its original lines in 1984.

Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte II was posted to Fort Inge in the early 1850s, and his letters from there are preserved by the Maryland Historical Society.

The United States Army garrisoned the fort until March 19, 1869, when the garrison was transferred to Fort McKavett. The army recovered materials from the site to use for additions to nearby Fort Clark. Fort Inge then saw use as a camp by the Texas Rangers until 1884.

In 1961, the site became the Fort Inge Historical Site County Park. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 12, 1985.^[1] The site is located on the Leona River and is dominated by the 140 foot high remains of an extinct volcano named Mount Inge.