Fort Stanton was a

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

fort A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

near

Lincoln, New Mexico Lincoln is an unincorporated village in Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States. Description The community sits in the Bonito Valley between the Sacramento Mountains and the Capitan Mountains at an elevation of 5,696 feet. The village is ...

Army Fort

Officers Quarters Fort Stanton New Mexico

It was built in 1855 by the 1st Dragoon and the 3rd and 8th Infantry Regiments to serve as a base of military operations against the Mescalero Apaches. Numerous campaigns were fought from 1855 until the 1880s. It was established to protect Hispano and White settlements along the Rio Bonito in the

Apache Wars The Apache Wars were a series of armed conflicts between the United States Army and various Apache tribal confederations fought in the southwest between 1849 and 1886, though minor hostilities continued until as late as 1924. After the Mexic ...

Kit Carson Christopher Houston Carson (December 24, 1809 – May 23, 1868) was an American frontiersman. He was a fur trapper, wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. He became a frontier legend in his own lifetime by biographies and n ...

, John "Black Jack" Pershing,

Billy the Kid Billy the Kid (born Henry McCarty; September 17 or November 23, 1859July 14, 1881), also known by the pseudonym William H. Bonney, was an outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West, who killed eight men before he was shot and killed at t ...

, Pat Garrett, and

Buffalo Soldiers Buffalo Soldiers originally were members of the 10th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army, formed on September 21, 1866, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This nickname was given to the Black Cavalry by Native American tribes who fought in t ...

of the 9th Cavalry all lived here. Confederate forces occupied the outpost in 1861, at the beginning of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

. This U.S. military fortification was abandoned with the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1896. The fort was originally established in part as the Mescalero Apache reservation. In 1873 the reservation was moved 30 miles southwest to its current location.

Marine Hospital

PSM V82 D365 Summer housing at fort stanton

In 1899, President

William McKinley William McKinley (January 29, 1843September 14, 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. As a politician he led a realignment that made his Republican Party largely dominant in ...

transferred Fort Stanton property from the War Department to the Marine Hospital Service, converting the military reservation to America's first federal tuberculosis sanatorium. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Fort Stanton was used as a detention center for German and Japanese Americans arrested as "enemy aliens," and 411 German nationals taken from the luxury liner ''Columbus'' in 1939 (officially recorded as "distressed seamen paroled from the German Embassy" since the U.S. was still technically neutral at the time of their capture). The "enemy aliens" were mostly immigrant residents of the U.S. who had been taken into custody as suspected saboteurs shortly after the U.S. entered the war, despite a lack of supporting evidence or access to due process for most internees. The 31 German American internees, labeled "troublemakers" by the Department of Justice, were kept separate from the 17

Japanese Americans are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...

(also deemed "troublesome" by authorities) who were transferred to Fort Stanton on March 10, 1945. These new arrivals were deported to Japan later that year. The hospital was closed in 1953.

Later history

In 2008, New Mexico governor

Bill Richardson William Blaine Richardson III (born November 15, 1947) is an American politician, author, and diplomat who served as the 30th governor of New Mexico from 2003 to 2011. He was also the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Energy Secretary ...

announced plans to establish Fort Stanton as a living history venue, Fort Stanton State Monument, and funds to renovate headquarters, officers quarters, and stables."Governor Richardson Announces Fort Stanton Renovations"
(

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

). Press Release, May 9, 2008. In 2009, the area around Fort Stanton and Fort Stanton Cave was designated by the U.S. Congress as a National Conservation Area (NCA), with more than 25,000 acres in order to protect a unique cave resource, Snowy River Passage in Fort Stanton Cave National Natural Landmark. Snowy River was discovered in 2001 by members of the Fort Stanton Cave Study Project. The new NCA, called Fort Stanton – Snowy River Cave, is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Roswell Field Office. The NCA has over 90 miles of multi-use trails for horseback riding, mountain bike riding and hiking. It is the venue of an annual

endurance riding Endurance riding is an equestrian sport based on controlled long-distance races. It is one of the international competitions recognized by the FEI. There are endurance rides worldwide. Endurance rides can be any distance, though they are rare ...

event that has grown to be 6 days long. The NCA is joined on its south and northeast boundaries by the Smokey Bear Ranger District of the

Lincoln National Forest Lincoln National Forest is a unit of the U.S. Forest Service located in southern New Mexico. Established by Presidential Proclamation in 1902 as the Lincoln Forest Reserve, the forest begins near the Texas border and contains lands in parts of ...

. In 2012, members of the Southwestern Region of the National Speleological Society completed a restoration project on the second floor balcony of Building #9, located on the Fort Stanton Quadrangle. In 2019, a team from AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps along with Fort Stanton Staff renovated and restored Fort Stanton's Hidalgo Building into a volunteer dormitory, began restoration on the historic school house, restored an original TB Hut, and expanded the hospital's current exhibit to include two new exhibits.

References

External links

Friends of Fort Stanton historical page
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20100917043713/http://aerc.org/Photo_Gallery/FS2005/cave/Fort_Stanton_Cave.html AERC.org: Fort Stanton Cave(slideshow) {{authority control Stanton History of New Mexico History of Lincoln County, New Mexico Museums in Lincoln County, New Mexico Military and war museums in New Mexico Bureau of Land Management areas in New Mexico Stanton Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in New Mexico National Register of Historic Places in Lincoln County, New Mexico United States Marine Hospitals Hospital buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in New Mexico

Army Fort

Marine Hospital

Later history

See also

References

Further reading

Sanitarium

World War II Internment Center

External links