Camp Ford functioned during the Civil War as a military detention facility, the largest Confederate prisoner-of-war camp west of the Mississippi River. Established in mid-1863 on high ground northeast of Tyler, it began as an open-air holding area for captured Union soldiers and was later enclosed with a log stockade covering several acres as its population grew. At its peak in 1864 it held roughly 4,700 to 6,000 Union prisoners, who built their own crude shelters within the enclosure; conditions were marked by chronic shortages of food, clothing, and medical care, and several hundred prisoners died in captivity. The camp operated as a working detention and guard post, complete with perimeter sentries, until it was emptied and dismantled following the Confederate surrender in 1865, after which the stockade structures were destroyed. For roughly a century afterward the site reverted to open land with little formal use. It was rediscovered and developed into a public heritage park in the twentieth century, and today it functions as a small city-owned historic park and greenspace on the outskirts of Tyler. The park preserves a reconstructed stockade corner, interpretive trails, and monuments, and serves an educational and passive-recreation function for visitors, researchers, and history groups rather than any ongoing military, agricultural, or commercial use.