Peeking into Camp Mabry's military past

Zipping — or crawling — along MoPac, one catches glimpses of low, white buildings, open fields and old military equipment at Camp Mabry.

Yet deep inside the headquarters for the Texas Military Forces are rolling hills, woods, two ponds, a picnic area, a museum and scores of structures that date back as far as 1892.

Your read that right: 1892.

One of the oldest structures is a brick dam, later covered in rusticated stone, that holds back a green-blue pond at the uppermost reaches of Taylor Slough. Once, it served as the bathing pool for military personnel. Now, wood ducks skim its smooth surface.

“There were two major building phases at Camp Mabry,” says Chantal McKenzie, architectural historian for the Texas Military Forces. “They surrounded World War I and World War II.”

Just uphill from the pond, for instance, is a row of buildings that once served as the heart of the base named after Brigadier Gen. Woodford H. Mabry, the Adjutant General of Texas from 1891 to 1898. It was his idea to train the state’s volunteers at the parade grounds on the camp’s original 80 acres.

Here, six large, brick barracks once stood, along with a mess hall, camp headquarters, hospital, guardhouse, five instructional workshops and two sheds. (Seen above in a 1922 photo.) The vast former mess hall now houses the Texas Military Forces Museum, which is packed with war materials and explanatory exhibits.

Two of the six barracks are gone. Last year, the others were renovated. Two were recently honored by Preservation Austin and by the Travis County Historical Commission for taking them back to a semblance of their 1918 condition.

The yellow-beige Butler Bricks were used because carpenters were in short supply, while the bricks made near where Butler Park now stands on Lady Bird Lake were plentiful.

The most striking elements around the former barracks — now offices — are the wide wooden porches and stairwells painted gray. Clearly, they were designed for utility. In fact, each barrack slept 400 inside and another 100 outside on the porches.

Now, why did they need space for that many men in 1918?

Because at that point, Mabry served as part of a grand experiment. Here, a logistically crucial school for automobile mechanics, run by the University of Texas, introduced combustible engines to a generation that knew little about cars, much less trucks, jeeps and tanks.

“There was a serious shortage in qualified personnel,” McKenzie says. “In a cooperative effort between the War Department and universities nationwide, training schools were created to fill this need.”

Camp Mabry was considered the biggest and best automotive school in the country. In all, 157 schools in at least 20 trades were established across the United States. By Nov. 1, 1918, UT, in conjuction with other Texas universities, trained more than 11,000 mechanics and technicians.

Across town on a hill above South Congress Avenue, the same experiment was applied to aeronautics at Penn Field. Additionally, a school for radio operators was based at Camp Mabry.

If there’s something reminiscent about Buildings 10 and 11, which won the preservation honors, it could be their resemblance to the remains of forts from the late 19th-century Indian Wars forts scattered across the Great Plains.

Builders back then understood one thing well: Climate. They put up these standardized barracks to avoid the worst western sunlight and to catch the prevailing breezes.

Many of the other structures, including the long row of white storage buildings visible from MoPac, were built by the Works Progress Administration between 1938 and 1941. The WPA also built the limestone bridges, culverts, fences, pylons and other park-like additions around the base.

Gone are the grandstands that, in early years, held Texans eager to witness the military volunteers marching on the parade grounds.

In the 1990s, base leaders evaluated all their structures that were over 50 years of age. This resulted in the listing of the Camp Mabry Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places and its designation as a State Archaeological Landmark. All these buildings are still used, however, by the Texas National Guard.

“Missions may have changed, but there is a tangible connection with their predecessors when they are walking the district or sitting at their desks,” says cultural program manager Kristen Mt.Joy. “At the same time, the community is welcome at Camp Mabry, just as they were many years ago.”

The museum is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesdays -Sundays. There, pick up a brochure, “A Walking Tour of Historic Camp Mabry,” which republishes a handy map and some pretty evocative images of the encampment going back to its earliest days.

“I consider myself a steward of these cultural assets,” McKenzie says. “And I take this responsibility very seriously. I always strive to find the ideal balance between supporting mission needs and meeting historic preservation objectives.”