Blockhouse on Signal Mountain
Off Mackenzie Hill Rd., Fort Sill, OKBuilt in 1871 as a signal station and weather observatory to protect outpost stationed there. Messages were relayed by heliographs, semaphore flags, and signal lamps to inform the garrison at Fort Sill on Indian movements, and to communicate with other troops. First meteorological records for this region were obtained here. The blockhouse has been used as an aiming point by generations of Field Artillerymen. The view from the Blockhouse also provided advance information on the approach of distinguished visitors such as GEN William Tecumseh Sherman who arrived in May 1871 to inspect the new fort and found a guard of honor ready to receive him.
Messages were transmitted from a base station at the post to another station on Medicine Bluffs, and from there to the Signal Mountain Blockhouse. At times signals were relayed to the detachments on Mt. Scott in the Wichita Mountains and from there as far north as Fort Reno.
The Indians have utilized Signal Mountain long before the military for smoke signals because of the outstanding visibility provided throughout the surrounding area. During periods when Fort Sill troops were not operating the blockhouse, the Indians continued to use it, and several white frontiersmen were killed by raiding Indians in the 1870s.
"Blockhouse Signal Mountain" has been a familiar phrase to Field Artillerymen laying their guns ever since the Field Artillery School was founded here in 1911. Today the Post's main firepower demonstrations are held in the vicinity of Signal Mountain and the blockhouse on its summit is a visible point of historic interest to thousands of spectators
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.