Fort Wingate: Where the Long Walk Began
Near Gallup, New Mexico
The abandoned military installation east of Gallup has been through several names and several purposes. It was established in eighteen sixty as Fort Fauntleroy, renamed Fort Lyon in eighteen sixty-one, and given its final name, Fort Wingate, in eighteen sixty-two. In eighteen sixty-four it became the staging point for one of the most devastating episodes in Navajo history.
Colonel Kit Carson's forces gathered thousands of Diné people here before marching them four hundred miles east to a barren reservation at Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River, an ordeal known as the Long Walk. Hundreds died of starvation and exposure along the way. The Navajo were held at Bosque Redondo for four years under terrible conditions before the federal government reversed course and allowed them to return home in eighteen sixty-eight.
Fort Wingate later served as an Army depot and closed in nineteen ninety-three. The grounds are now managed by the Navajo Nation.
