Erin Caro Aguayo, "NOW SHOWING AT FORT LEATON: The Really Wild West!"
Cenizo Journal, Third Quarter 2011

The picture-perfect scenery and lazy waves of summer heat near Presidio and Big Bend Ranch State Park belie a past steeped in violence, secrets and treachery. And throughout the last 160 years of that past has stood the building originally called El Fortin, then El Fortin de Burgess and finally El Fortin de Leaton, Fort Leaton.
                                
This fort was never a military fort but one built by the trader, mercenary, land grabber and shady dealer Ben Leaton to protect his merchandise, horses, men and family from Indian raids and theft.

Throughout its history, the fort has been a crossroads for freighters and travelers coming from Chihuahua through La Junta de los Rios/Presidio and on into Texas and beyond. It was a residence until the1920s and then had the good luck to be the focus of the preservation movement that began in the 1930s and continued through the 1960s. When it came into the hands of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) in the 1970s, it opened as a state historic site, telling the story of the region and its people.

With an average yearly visitation of 6,500 people, the fort has been a popular stop along the River Road since then. But with parks and wildlife’s increased focus on Big Bend Ranch State Park, the fort, which is a natural jumping off place for park visitors, deserved some sprucing up.

These days, the heavy and low-lit exhibits from the 70s are being updated and freshened by exhibit and curatorial staff, headed by Dana Younger and Joanne Avant and assisted by Linda Hedges, Nola Davis and Tim Roberts. The “new” fort will be partially furnished with period pieces, and the original look of the fort will be further demonstrated in sketches of the rooms as they might have looked.

Throughout the life of the fort historic site there has been a video about the fort’s history. Tony Manriquez, the site superintendent, wanted also to replace the video that introduces visitors to Fort Leaton. He wanted to cover two big pieces of fort history that had not been well addressed – Ben Leaton’s story and how parks and wildlife went about preserving the site of the fort in the 1970s.

These two parts of the story seemed a natural for the new video, and so the work began. Angela Reed and Cindy Brandimarte from TPWD’s Austin headquarters wrote the script and produced the film, and Alpine artist Avram Dumitrescu provided watercolor illustrations. Tackling a video story for which there was no photographic record was a challenge, but the writers were unfazed.

“We turned to Fort Davis resident and historian Lonn Taylor to come up with a story line,” Brandimarte said. “Angela and I worked on a script, and we ran into a big problem: How do you tell that story? Photography had just been invented.”

“We didn’t have historic photos of that site and certainly not of Ben Leaton,” Reed said, “nor of any of the wild and dramatic events that are part of the story.”

They needed pictures, but where would they come from?

“Lonn Taylor suggested Alpine illustrator Avram Dumitrescu to create watercolor drawings; so we contacted him,” Reed said. “We found one image from the Marfa Public Library titled ‘Ben Leaton,’ but we think that the photo postdates Leaton’s death,” Reed said. “There were no known photographers in Texas until the 1840s, typically in cities; the earliest known photographer in San Antonio was 1850, and Leaton died in 1851. So, it is possible but not likely that it’s Leaton, in our opinion,” Brandimarte said.

“Without the face of Ben Leaton or of any of the people we were talking about, we didn’t know how to depict him,” Reed said. “We asked that when Avram drew him that it was never a straight-on image of his face because we don’t know what he looked like.”

“I did each illustration in pencil,” explained Dumitrescu, “and some of them came together pretty quickly, but others I’d send a sketch, and they’d make suggestions, and I’d make changes and send it back. I could go into Photoshop and move things, combine various sketches and so on. I was using technology to make it easier. If I hadn’t had e-mail, I couldn’t have done it.”

“There was a lot of back and forth,” Reed said. “You say you want a wagon. What size should the wheels be? What should the wagon look like?”

It was tricky making the unknown as historically accurate as possible.

“We had to run the imagery by our natural resource people,” explained Reed. “And they would say ‘No, there were no cows like you have here. They were skinny and underfed. If you had one, it was a random milking cow.’”

“I’m not a history buff,” Dumitrescu said, “and I didn’t know the period.”

“We had all kinds of people looking at Avram’s images to make sure they were accurate, not only for the history, but for the topography and the climate. The going back and forth on our part was probably hard for Avram, because we’d have to come back with these tiny details,” Reed said.

Portraying Ben Leaton and the fort presented challenges for the artist.

“I don’t typically do a lot of figurative work, and it’s a lot of figures,” Dumitrescu said. “The trick for me was finding good photo references. Mary Bones at the Museum of the Big Bend invited me to look at the Smithers Photographic Collection. I went through hundreds and hundreds of photographs from around that time to find good sources of historical material, in addition to those provided by parks and wildlife.”

“We would love to have had Avram do a million pictures,” Reed said, “but then there’s the budget.”

The video is the icing on the cake for the new exhibits at Fort Leaton. It stands out not just for the story, but for the incredible investment of energy and enthusiasm of the many people involved in its creation.

“We hope that it will present Ben Leaton’s story in a way that modern Texans can appreciate and find entertaining,” Brandimarte said. “Most of all, we hope that the film will bring a long-lost character of West Texas history back to life in visitors’ imaginations.”

Many of the new exhibits are already in place, with completion of the entire project, including the video, scheduled for the end of the summer 2011.