Fort Bird

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FORT BIRD. After the battle of Village Creek in May 1841, Gen. Edward H. Tarrant ordered the construction and garrisoning of a fort near the site to protect the extreme northwest corner of the Texas frontier. Fort Bird (or Bird's Fort), constructed by a hundred volunteers of the Fourth Brigade of Texas Militia under Maj. Jonathan Bird in September and October 1841, consisted of a blockhouse and several smaller buildings enclosed in a picket stockade.

Bird's company and that of Capt. Alexander W. Webb occupied the fort until March 1842, when it was apparently abandoned. The Sniveley expedition was disbanded at Fort Bird in August 1843, and in September the fort housed a council between representatives of the Republic of Texas and nine Indian tribes. Fort Bird subsequently became the site of the Tarrant County community of Birdville, now part of northeast Fort Worth. In Arlington a stone marker, seven miles to the south, commemorates the fort.