Established in 1852 as a supply center for Fort Clark, Brackettville became as trade center as the region filled with ranches and farms. It is the county seat for Kinney County, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island, but has only one other town (Spofford, population 70, 10 miles south of Brackettville).
Seminole Indian Scout Cemetery, about 5 mils south of Brackettville on FM 3348, is the only monument to this group of people with a remarkable history. Buried here, along with some of their descendants are around a hundred Black Seminole Indians who served as Army scouts at nearby Fort Clark. Their history goes back to the early 1800s when a group of slaves ran away from Georgia and South Carolina to Florida, where they became sharecroppers for Seminole Indians. In Florida, the blacks and Seminoles intermarries and fought the US Army together but kept separate camps. In the 1840s several bands of the black and Seminole warriors were captured by the Army and sent to a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. From here they escaped across Texas to northern Mexico, where they were employed by the Mexican government to keep the Apaches and Comanches at bay, thus earning a reputation as fearless Indian fighters. In exchange for their services, Mexico gave them land at Naciamente (below Piedras Negras, Mexico).
Throughout the 1850s and 1860s, the mixed band of blacks and Seminoles kept to themselves and began to merge toward a single ethnicity that featured a mixture of Indian and African dialects. As the Civil War came to a close, the US Army approached the Black Seminoles for help ridding the Fort Clark area of Comanches. Lt. John "Thunderbolt" Bullis led the Seminole-Negro Indian Scouts (as they were officially called) in 26 successful Indian campaigns between 1871 and 1881, during which three Seminole scouts earned Medals of Honor. A fourth scout was awarded the Medal of Honor during a campaign with MacKenzie's Raiders. All four of these scouts have grave markers in the cemetery.
The Seminole Indian scouts were disbanded in 1914. Around 50 of their descendants live in Brackettville and another hundred or so in Naciamente, Mexico.
Fort Clark is the only frontier fort in Texas to have been turned into a resort, complete with golf course, swimming pool, motel, bar, and RV park. Some of the original buildings have been restored. The 1872 barracks is now the motel. The fort opened in the early 1850s and didn't close until 1946.
Alamo Village, a replica of the 19th century Alamo Mission, is the largest movie set ever built outside of Hollywood. It took 5,000 men two years (1957-59) to build, using the original Spanish plans and adobe bricks made on-site by adobemakers from Mexico - all to be used for the John Wayne epic film The Alamo. After the film was completed, the set was expanded to include an Old West town that has been used by production companies in making nearly 40 feature films (including Lonesome Dove) and hundreds of TV shows and commercials. One end of town is said to represent San Antonio and the other Fort Worth in the 1880s. Daily 9-5. Admission: $6 ph: 512-563-2580