Fort Wingate (McKinley County, near Gallup, New Mexico)
McKinley County, near Gallup · New Mexico · Apache Wars, Navajo Wars
History & Significance
Fort Wingate was established in 1868 at the former site of Fort Lyon on Navajo territory, initially to control and protect the large Navajo tribe to its north. The post emerged after Navajo and U.S. government representatives signed a treaty in summer 1868 allowing the Navajo people to return to their homes, with the treaty providing replacement livestock in return for the Navajo people's pledge to confine themselves to a finite area and cease raiding activities.
Navajo people returning from Bosque Redondo were temporarily settled at the Oso Del Ojo Fort Wingate before spreading out into the newly established Navajo Reservation. The fort's troops participated in Apache Wars from 1873–1886 with recruited Navajo Scouts; from 1870 onward the garrison was concerned with Apaches to the south, and through 1890 hundreds of Navajo Scouts were enlisted at the fort.
Fort Wingate troops often settled disagreements between Navajo and citizens in New Mexico from 1868–1895. The fort's roles included protecting construction activities of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, and Navajo scouts based at the fort supported United States efforts against Apache forces, with the fort becoming an incarceration facility for captured Apaches.
An 1896 fire destroyed many of the fort's buildings, which the military replaced with buildings of local red sandstone shortly after 1900. The United States decommissioned the fort in 1912, it briefly served again in 1914 and 1915 when an internment camp housed refugees from the Mexican Revolution, and the United States Ordnance Department took possession of the site as a depot.
During World War II, Fort Wingate became a major storage center with its earthen, igloo-like storage buildings visible from Route 66, and most famously, Navajo code talkers trained here. The fort supplied 100 tons of Composition B high explosives to the Manhattan Project for use in the first Trinity test and became an ammunition depot until it was closed by the 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission.
Key Facts
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Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Wingate
- https://www.nps.gov/places/fort-wingate-historic-district.htm
- https://newmexicohistory.org/places/fort-wingate-1
- https://nmarchives.unm.edu/repositories/22/resources/1846
- https://www.visitgallup.com/blog/fort-wingate/