This historical marker stands in front of private property that was once home to a military post and called 'Fort Jones' in which the nearby town of Fort Jones derived its name. The historic marker reads:
There is no trace of a former fort here at all and I could not locate any picture of this fort online. The following words come from the Fort Jones Museum's website:
Named for Colonel Roger Jones, Adjutant General of the Army from 1825-52, the fort at Fort Jones was garrisoned by Company E 4th U.S. Infantry in October 1852, under the command of Captain (Brevet Major) Edward H. Fitzgerald.
In the beginning there were only a couple of log buildings with dirt floors, but by 1854, there were a total of nine structures, “…of which seven are of unhewn logs and two of rough boards. Two of the log buildings, two rooms each, are occupied as officers quarters, one log building as Company quarters and mess room, a fourth log building as laundress’s quarters and Guard House, a fifth as an Hospital and the other two log houses are kitchens to officer’s quarters. The two frame buildings are Subsistence and Quartermaster Storehouse, Stable and Granary. The log houses, daubed with mud, good roof and floored, except the one in which the Guard Room is, which has no floor and a bad roof, are quite comfortable and with the present force at the Post are barely sufficient in size and number.”
General George Crook, who later gained fame during the Civil War, was stationed at Fort Jones when he first left West Point. It is said that General Ulysses S. Grant and Phillip Sheridan were also assigned duty at Fort Jones but never arrived.
At any rate, by the middle 1850s, relations between the army and the Shasta (Indians) were improving, at least in the eyes of the U. S. Army. Correspondence from the fort supports the fact that there were fewer encounters with local Shasta, even though other, violent, encounters continued to occur throughout the region for many years.
I also located a wonderful article of the history of Fort Jones and includes a few nice pictures (including this marker) here.