Old Stone Fort

The rain today finally let up about the time that we were scheduled to head downtown. A reporter from the Daily Sentinel met us there, and so did Hardy Merideth, the official photographer for the University. The heat was not nearly as bad as it had been, so they days work was much more enjoyable.

Our goal this time out was to go to where the Old Stone Fort used to stand to make a new photograph. That's right, I said used to be. The fort now stands on the campus of SFA, supposedly disallowing any unaware freshman who sets foot inside from graduating. The corner the fort is at now is actually the third location that it has been moved to, and hopefully the last. It was first built in the heart of downtown, but in 1903 it was disassembled and reconstructed somewhere near the Old Nacogdoches University Building, which is now on the campus of Thomas J. Rusk Middle School. After a short time there, it was moved to SFA.

Our vantage point was limited by the fact that at some point in the past someone decided to just go ahead and build a Regions Bank right in our way. The fort itself used to stick out much farther into Main Street than does the current Commercial Bank. The original photographer might have taken this shot straight on, but we had to employ some fancy-schmancy view camera tricks to get everything lined up. We should be developing the film any day now.