Fort Stanton Historic Site
History
Introduction
On March 19, 1855, three hundred soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment began constructing Fort Stanton along the banks of the Rio Bonito. Located in a valley between the Capitán Mountains and the Sierra Blanca, known among the Mescalero Apache as zúuníidu, meaning "beautiful land," the future fort would lay in the heart of the tribe's territory. The fort was the brainchild of Josecito, the leader of the Sierra Blanca band of the Mescalero Apache. He had first proposed the establishment of a military post two years earlier as part of a peace agreement with New Mexico Governor William Carr. The treaty, however, had since collapsed. The erection of the fort, initially envisioned as a place of trade and protection, was now an act of conquest. It marked the first time that outsiders had settled in the area since the Mescalero had made it their homeland around the turn of the sixteenth century. It also heralded the beginning of a complex relationship that shaped both the built environment of Fort Stanton and the various people who interacted with it.
The environment surrounding the fort and its characteristics ensured its long-term survival and continual renewal. The soldiers had received orders to build Fort Stanton out of the same material as every other fort in the territory: adobe. But for reasons that are elusive today, they failed to follow this command. The most likely cause for the troop’s apparent insubordination was Fort Stanton’s isolation. It was located over one hundred miles from any major settlement, including local tradesmen and expert Hispano adobe makers. The post's commander noted this problem in a letter to his superiors in Santa Fe when he complained about the lack of skilled craftsmen available. In the end, the soldiers constructed the fort out of sandstone that they quarried nearby. The post that emerged thus took on the unique features of zúuníidu.
The decision to build Fort Stanton out of stone rather than adobe proved fateful. The fort subsequently survived multiple abandonments, arsons, and lootings during the Civil War and conflicts with the surrounding Apache peoples. After the U.S. military formally withdrew from Fort Stanton in 1896, its robustness and location in zúuníidu led to the U.S. Marine Hospital Service, later known as the U.S. Public Health Service, to reoccupy and repurpose the site into the first federal sanitorium in the United States. From 1899 to 1952, Fort Stanton treated thousands of U.S. Merchant Marine and Coast Guard sailors afflicted with tuberculosis and spearheaded research on the disease.
Its unique infrastructure and setting also led to the establishment of the first German, and later Japanese-American, internment camp in the United States during World War II (1941-1945). In 1953, the federal government transferred control of Fort Stanton to the New Mexico state government. Until 1966, it remained a medical facility dedicated to treating tuberculosis among a new cadre of primarily Navajo patients. Use of the site subsequently waned, but nevertheless continued into the twenty-first century. It served as a branch of the Los Lunas Hospital from 1966 to 1995. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the site served as a low security women’s prison and a drug rehabilitation center.
Fort Stanton's resilience and repeated reinvention have made it among the most historically and architecturally significant sites in New Mexico. It remains the most structurally intact Territorial-era military fort in New Mexico and its history is deeply intertwined with the nearby Mescalero Apache. The vast majority of the site's structures and surrounding landscape features, however, date from the federal and state hospital periods in the twentieth century. Consequently, Fort Stanton's built environment is a product of both military conflicts and the development of the modern public health service.
These events involved diverse groups of peoples who called Fort Stanton and zúuníidu their home. They included Mescalero Apache, U.S. soldiers and their wives, settlers, gunslingers and outlaws, doctors, nurses, merchant sailors, Civilian Conservation Corps workers, German and JapaneseAmerican internees, and the Navajo. Many of these peoples contributed to the appearance of the site's built environment today. Fort Stanton's a period of significance, as a result, spans from 1855 to 1966 and the site is crucial to understanding local, state, and national history during these years.
For a more in-depth view of the history Fort Stanton Historic Site, follow the links below on the expanded topics:
The Mescalero Apache and Zúuníidu, 1400-1845
U.S. Expansion and the Establishment of Fort Stanton, 1846-1860
The Apache and Lincoln County Wars, 1870-1896
The Establishment of Fort Stanton Hospital, 1897-1929
The New Deal, World War II, and Curing Tuberculosis, 1930-1952
Fort Stanton’s Later Years, 1966-Present
