Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Fort Davis, TX

Fort Davis is an unincorporated community and census-designated place that serves as the county seat of Jeff Davis County in the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas.

At about 4,900 feet above sea level, Fort Davis has the highest elevation of any county seat in Texas.

The town grew up around Fort Davis, a United States Army post established in 1854 on the San Antonio-El Paso Road and named for Jefferson Davis, then the United States Secretary of War; the fort was reestablished in 1867 after the Civil War.

The 460-acre Fort Davis National Historic Site, established in 1961, preserves one of the best remaining examples of a frontier army fort in the American Southwest.

The 2020 census counted 1,024 residents in the Fort Davis census-designated place, living in 415 households, down from 1,201 residents in 2010.

On Mount Locke near Fort Davis stands the McDonald Observatory of the University of Texas at Austin, founded in 1939, whose Hobby-Eberly Telescope has a 433-inch mirror made of 91 segments, among the largest telescope mirrors in the world.

Fort Davis hosts one of the ten dishes that make up the Very Long Baseline Array, a continent-spanning radio telescope network.

Davis Mountains State Park, just west of town, and the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Gardens at the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute draw visitors to the Fort Davis area year-round.

Thanks to its elevation, Fort Davis has a semi-arid climate with only about 15.5 inches of rain a year, cool dry winters, and big swings between daytime and nighttime temperatures.

Local students attend Fort Davis Independent School District schools, including Dirks-Anderson Elementary School and Fort Davis High School, and all of Jeff Davis County is zoned to Odessa College.