Fort Fillmore, located at 32°13′30″N 106°42′52″W, was a United States military fortification established by Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner in September 1851 near Mesilla in what is now New Mexico , primarily for the purpose of protecting settlers and traders traveling to California . Early frontier migrants were under constant threat from attack by local Native Americans, and a network of forts was eventually created by the U.S. government to protect and encourage westward expansion. Fort Fillmore was intended to protect a corridor plagued by hostile Apaches , where several migration routes converged between El Paso and Tucson to take advantage of Apache Pass .
25-459: Fort Fillmore was originally constructed in the jacal style with upright wood posts plastered over with adobe; later, more substantial adobe walls were erected. Much of the work on the fort was done by the soldiers with the assistance of local Mexican laborers who made the adobe bricks. The post was built on sand hills above the Rio Grande . The Rio Grande would later change its course, making
50-515: A common building material for wall and ceiling surfaces, in which a series of nailed wooden strips are covered with plaster smoothed into a flat surface. In many regions this building method has itself been overtaken by drywall construction using plasterboard sheets. The wattle is made by weaving thin branches (either whole, or more usually split) or slats between upright stakes. The wattle may be made as loose panels, slotted between timber framing to make infill panels, or made in place to form
75-583: A supply point when he drilled geothermal wells about fifteen miles west of the post.. Two days after the Union's unsuccessful attack on Confederate soldiers under the command of Lt. Col. John Baylor at the First Battle of Mesilla on July 25, 1861, Fort Fillmore was set afire and abandoned by the Union army. As they retreated back to Fort Stanton under Major Isaac Lynde, they became desperately thirsty and exhausted. When 300 Confederate soldiers approached
100-434: A system of augered holes on one side and short chiseled grooves along the other. The holes (along with holes of square paneling) are drilled at a slight angle towards the outer face of each stud. This allows room for upright hazels to be tied to ledgers from the inside of the building. The horizontal ledgers are placed every two to three feet (0.6 to 0.9 metres) with whole hazel rods positioned upright top to bottom and lashed to
125-491: Is a composite building method used for making walls and buildings, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called " wattle " is "daubed" with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw. Wattle and daub has been used for at least 6,000 years and is still an important construction method in many parts of the world. Many historic buildings include wattle and daub construction. The wattle and daub technique has been used since
150-413: Is provided by straw, hair, hay or other fibrous materials, and helps to hold the mix together as well as to control shrinkage and provide flexibility. The daub may be mixed by hand, or by treading – either by humans or livestock . It is then applied to the wattle and allowed to dry, and often then whitewashed to increase its resistance to rain. Sometimes there can be more than one layer of daub. At
175-725: The Gila Expedition of 1857 and in operations against the Apaches in the Sacramento Mountains . In one foray, Captain Henry W. Stanton, namesake of Fort Stanton , New Mexico, was killed near the Rio Penasco. His grave was one of the few to be identified when the abandoned post was inspected in 1869. Most of the soldiers and civilians interred in the fort's cemetery are still buried there on a sand ridge southeast of
200-1184: The Neolithic period. It was common for houses of Linear pottery and Rössen cultures of middle Europe, but is also found in Western Asia ( Çatalhöyük , Shillourokambos ) as well as in North America ( Mississippian culture ) and South America ( Brazil ). In Africa it is common in the architecture of traditional houses such as those of the Ashanti people . Its usage dates back at least 6,000 years. There are suggestions that construction techniques such as lath and plaster and even cob may have evolved from wattle and daub. Fragments from prehistoric wattle and daub buildings have been found in Africa, Europe, Mesoamerica and North America. Evidence for wattle and daub (or "wattle and reed") fire pits, storage bins, and buildings shows up in Egyptian archaeological sites such as Merimda and El Omari, dating back to
225-679: The "wattle" portion of jacal structures consists mainly of vertical poles lashed together with cordage and sometimes supported by a pole framework, as in the pit-houses of the Basketmaker III period of the Ancestral Puebloan (a.k.a. Anasazi) people of the American Southwest. This is overlain with a layer of mud/adobe (the "daub"), sometimes applied over a middle layer of dry grasses or brush which functions as insulation. Wattle and daub Wattle and daub
250-459: The 500 retreating Union soldiers, Lynde surrendered his demoralized troops without firing a shot. On August 7, 1862, federal troops near Fort Fillmore engaged in a skirmish with Confederate troops retreating from Santa Fe , defeating them. The fort was officially closed by the Union in October 1862, but sources continue to mention Fort Fillmore as a waypoint along several major routes throughout
275-718: The 5th millennium BCE, predating the use of mud brick and continuing to be the preferred building material until about the start of the First Dynasty. It continued to flourish well into the New Kingdom and beyond. Vitruvius refers to it as being employed in Rome . A review of English architecture especially reveals that the sophistication of this craft is dependent on the various styles of timber frame housing. The wattle and plaster process has been replaced in modern architecture by brick and mortar or by lath and plaster ,
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#1732791393997300-553: The Mitchell Site, the anterior of the house had double layers of burned daub. There were two popular choices for wattle and daub infill paneling: close-studded paneling and square paneling. Close-studding panels create a much narrower space between the timbers: anywhere from 7 to 16 inches (18 to 40 cm). For this style of panel, weaving is too difficult, so the wattles run horizontally and are known as ledgers. The ledgers are sprung into each upright timber (stud) through
325-543: The approximate location of the fort. Jacal The jacal (həˈkɑːl; Mexican Spanish from Nahuatl xacalli contraction of xamitl calli ; literally "hut") is an adobe -style housing structure historically found throughout parts of the Southwestern United States and Mexico . This type of structure was employed by some aboriginal people of the Americas prior to European colonization and
350-439: The common use of acacias as wattle in early Australian European settlements. Daub is usually created from a mixture of ingredients from three categories: binders , aggregates and reinforcement. Binders hold the mix together and can include clay, lime , chalk dust and limestone dust. Aggregates give the mix its bulk and dimensional stability through materials such as mud, sand, crushed chalk and crushed stone. Reinforcement
375-435: The daub. To insert wattles in a square panel several steps are required. First, a series of evenly spaced holes are drilled along the middle of the inner face of each upper timber. Next, a continuous groove is cut along the middle of each inner face of the lower timber in each panel. Vertical slender timbers, known as staves, are then inserted and these hold the whole panel within the timber frame. The staves are positioned into
400-441: The fort about 1 mile from the river. This forced the army to use water wagons to supply the post with water and made it hard to defend in the event of attack. Fort Fillmore served as an operating base for units of the 1st Dragoons , briefly the 2nd Dragoons , Regiment of Mounted Rifles , and the 3rd and briefly the 8th Infantry Regiments . It was for a time the headquarters of the 3rd Infantry Regiment. The troops were active in
425-409: The ground, the gaps being stopped with pug (kneaded clay and grass mixture). Another term for this construction is palisade and pug . "Mud and stud" is a similar process to wattle and daub, with a simple frame consisting only of upright studs joined by cross rails at the tops and bottoms. Thin staves of ash were attached, then daubed with a mixture of mud, straw, hair and dung. The style of building
450-555: The holes and then sprung into the grooves. They must be placed with sufficient gaps to weave the flexible horizontal wattles. In some places or cultures, the technique of wattle and daub was used with different materials and thus has different names. In the early days of the colonisation of South Australia , in areas where substantial timber was unavailable, pioneers' cottages and other small buildings were frequently constructed with light vertical timbers, which may have been "native pine" ( Callitris or Casuarina spp. ), driven into
475-415: The ledgers. These hazel rods are generally tied a finger-width apart with 6–8 rods each with a 16-inch (40 cm) width. Gaps allow key formation for drying. Square panels are large, wide panels typical of some later timber-frame houses. These panels may be square in shape, or sometimes triangular to accommodate arched or decorative bracing. This style requires the wattles to be woven for better support of
500-573: The period of westward expansion. The Upper and Lower Emigrant Trails converged in El Paso and, along with the Butterfield, Pacific and Overland Trails, passed through the corridor Fort Fillmore was erected to defend. The remains of the fort were leveled at some later date after a failed attempt by the owner to sell or trade it to the State of New Mexico as a park. A grove of pecan trees now stands on
525-600: The remains of the fort. A fence and flagpole are now located on the cemetery's site. Fort Fillmore was a stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail . Possibly the most famous soldier who served at Fort Fillmore was Captain George Pickett . Pickett is best remembered for leading the fateful charge on July 3, 1863 at the Battle of Gettysburg . In 1855, Union General Ambrose Burnside used the fort as
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#1732791393997550-433: The type of brick molded with the same materials and used as infilling between posts. Columbage refers to the timber-framed construction with diagonal bracing of the framework. Pierratage or bousillage is the material filled into the structural timbers. Bajarreque is a wall constructed with the technique of wattle and daub. The wattle here is made of bagasse , and the daub is the mix of clay and straw. Jacal can refer to
575-525: The whole of a wall. In different regions, the material of wattle can be different. For example, at the Mitchell Site on the northern outskirts of the city of Mitchell, South Dakota, willow has been found as the wattle material of the walls of the house. Reeds and vines can also be used as wattle material. The origin of the term wattle describing a group of acacias in Australia, is derived from
600-527: Was later employed by both Hispanic and Non-Hispanic settlers in Texas and elsewhere. Typically, a jacal consisted of slim close-set poles tied together and filled out with mud, clay and grasses. More sophisticated structures, such as those constructed by the Ancestral Pueblo people , incorporated adobe bricks—sun-baked mud and sandstone. Jacal construction is similar to wattle and daub . However,
625-705: Was once common in Lincolnshire . Pierrotage is the infilling material used in French Vernacular architecture of the Southern United States to infill between half-timbering with diagonal braces, which is similar to daub. It is usually made of lime mortar clay mixed with small stones. It is also called bousillage or bouzillage, especially in French Vernacular architecture of Louisiana of the early 1700s. The materials of bousillage are Spanish moss or clay and grass. Bousillage also refers to
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