In the first seven months of Fort Concho, its garrison – numbering 129 in the 1869 reports of the War Department, out of a force of 3,672 in Texas – occupied by its plodding construction. This was the cause of much criticism by local Texas newspapers; the frontier continued to retreat in the remaining years of the 1860s. Meanwhile, outside of building work, the garrison patrolled, scouted, and escorted cattle herds and wagon trains on the San Antonio–El Paso Road. There was thus little combat in Texas, according to the US Army records. Inaction by the army, whose garrisons were poorly and irregularly supplied, and criticism of that inaction, continued into 1871.