Fort Bliss: A Century and a Half Guarding the Pass of the North

The military post at El Paso del Norte has been in more or less continuous operation since eighteen forty-nine, making Fort Bliss one of the oldest active military installations in the country. It has moved six times, changed names, and outlasted wars, revolutions, and the entire arc of westward expansion.

Major Jefferson Van Horne established the original post in downtown El Paso in eighteen forty-nine, charged with protecting territory the United States had just acquired from Mexico. The fort relocated repeatedly over the following decades, from Magoffinsville to Camp Concordia to Hart's Mill, settling at its current location on Lanoria Mesa in eighteen ninety-three after El Paso citizens donated the land.

During the Civil War, Confederate forces occupied Fort Bliss briefly, but Union troops from California pushed them out in eighteen sixty-two. The fort spent the next decades protecting wagon roads, mail routes, and settlers from Apache raids across the Trans-Pecos region.

Fort Bliss became Pershing's primary staging ground in nineteen sixteen, when Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico. The Punitive Expedition that chased Villa deep into Mexico launched from here, and the base swelled with troops, artillery, and the Army's earliest aviation assets.

After World War Two, German rocket scientists arrived at Fort Bliss as part of Operation Paperclip, beginning the American missile program that would eventually reach the moon. Wernher von Braun and his team worked here before moving to Huntsville, Alabama.

Today Fort Bliss is one of the largest military installations in the world, covering over a million acres and serving as home to the First Armored Division. The pass that El Paso is named for, the ancient route between the mountains, has been watched over from this ground for going on two centuries.