(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

Sitting on disputed land added to the United States after the Mexican American war, Fort Davis, a remote military outpost marked by several exchanges of land and reinterpretations of sovereignty in nineteenth-century Texas, was established as an US Military outpost in 1854, a piece of the frontier fort system advancing settlement of the “west” through instituting new governance over previously established tribal lands, actively inhabited by Mescalero Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa peoples. This land had been bureaucratically exchanged several times while under French, Spanish, and Mexican jurisdiction over the previous centuries. During the US Civil War, the abandoned fort became a station for the Confederate States Army. After, Fort Davis was returned to the US military and housed all-black infantry and Calvary regimens. Long unoccupied thereafter, Fort Davis is now a National Historic Site. Conflicts, tensions, and diverging narratives emerged from each new change of power. This fort is a fundamental case study in placemaking as establishing sovereignty and the role architecture plays in the establishment of boundary and land control. Through frequent changing ownership, we see the physical fort as currency, the built reality reflecting negotiations of power. Understanding the depth of the historical and cultural significance of these exchanges extends beyond knowing occupants vs opposition. The narratives of each occupancy change details the roles such places play in cultural-place exchanges, explaining meanings and messages places carry for the people they represent and impact. This paper describes a project that brings the diverse voices of this place forward in the story of Fort Davis, and maps those voiced narratives as thoroughly as it does the walls who kept them in or out using mapping, LiDAR scanning, video, and VR recording/modeling. In this, the visual representation of Fort Davis can also provide individual representation for those linked to it.