This map traces the path taken by an 1852 scouting party from Ft. Phantom Hill, about fourteen miles from Abilene, Texas, to Double Mountain. Of particular interest was the party's attention to locations of water resources in the lands adjacent to the fort. Ft. Phantom Hill was established November 14, 1851, and abandoned in November, 1853. Lieutenant Clinton Lear, the post's quartermaster, asserted that he could not imagine "that God ever intended white man to occupy such a barren waste" as was found at Phantom Hill. By 1858, the property was reoccupied as a way station on the Southern Overland Mail route and the Butterfield Stagecoach. Fort Phantom Hill was used again during the Civil War by the Confederacy's Frontier Battalion.