 From about 1700 to the 1870s, Comanche, Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, Kickapoo, and Kiowa roamed the county.These tribes settled in rock shelters in the river and creek valleys, leaving behind artifacts and caches of seeds, implements, burial sites, petroglyphs, river shells, turkey and deer bones, flint knives, scrapers, and points.In 1851, United States Army post Fort Chadbourne  was established to protect the frontier, and the fort was manned until the Civil War.