Fort Stanton on the Rio Bonito

North of Ruidoso, in a green valley on the banks of the Rio Bonito, stands one of the best-preserved frontier forts in the West. On March nineteenth, eighteen fifty-five, three hundred soldiers of the Third United States Infantry began raising Fort Stanton in a valley the Mescalero Apache called zuuniidu, meaning beautiful land, squarely in the heart of Apache country between the Capitan Mountains and Sierra Blanca. There is a hard irony in its origins.

A Mescalero leader named Josecito had proposed a military post here as part of a peace agreement, yet for nearly three decades soldiers rode out from this fort on campaigns against his own people. When the army finally withdrew in eighteen ninety-six, the fort found an unexpected second life. The federal government turned it into the first government tuberculosis sanatorium in the United States, and from eighteen ninety-nine until nineteen fifty-three it treated thousands of merchant mariners and Coast Guard sailors sick with the disease, while its doctors pushed forward the research that helped fight it.

Few places pack this much American history into one quiet valley, from Apache diplomacy to Indian wars to public health.