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Enlisted Men's Barracks
At Fort Tejon, California
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Enlisted men's barracks at Fort Tejon.Fort Tejon, located at the top of the Grapevine Pass in Grapevine Canyon (Cañada de las Uvas) was garrisoned by the United States Army on Aug. 10, 1854, to control Native Americans on the Sebastian Indian Reservation, 17 miles to the northeast, and to guard against raiding parties from other tribes. Concurrently, Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for California and Nevada, was setting up the new 75,000-acre Tejon Indian Reservation at the foot of Tejon Pass.
The first military fort in California's interior, Tejon was abandoned in just 10 years, on September 11, 1864, as a cost-cutting measure by the U.S. Army, which had more important things to spend money on (like a war against the South).
Structures at Fort Tejon were arranged in a quadrangle around the parade grounds and were constructed at various times throughout the army's occupation of the fort. Some, including the enlisted men's barracks, were destroyed and rebuilt after a major earthquake, epicentered at the fort, struck at 8:13 a.m. on Jan. 9, 1857. Many more were lost and never rebuilt after an earthquake a century later, in 1957.
Photo June 24, 2001, by Leon Worden.
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