November 23, 1997
Monument to Frontier Duty
By James Abarr
Of the Journal
A long a low, sandy ridge on the east bank of the Rio Grande, just north of Las Cruces, rows of weathered adobe walls of a long-abandoned frontier military post stand like weary sentinels.
Cottonwoods line a spacious parade ground now grown high with wild grass, while light desert breezes murmur through the crumbled ruins of structures that once echoed to the sounds of Army life. Across the river to the west, the folded ridges of timeless Mount Robledo still look down as they did in that year of 1865 when Fort Selden was new.
Today, ruins of the venerable old post, standing astride the southern end of the arid Jornada del Muerto (Journey of the Dead), are preserved as a New Mexico state monument.
New mission
Fort Selden was a product of the revamping of the nation's western frontier defense system in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Within a month of the end of the war at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, the Army resumed its pre-war mission of protecting settlers and ranchers in New Mexico and other Western territories. During the four-year struggle between North and South, these people had largely been left to their own devices.
In May 1865, Brig. Gen. James H. Carleton, commanding the Military Department of New Mexico, ordered construction of a new fort to protect the Mesilla Valley of southern New Mexico from marauding Indians and outlaws and to guard Robledo Crossing, a key emigrant ford on the Rio Grande.
In compliance with Carleton's directive, Maj. Nelson Davis of the Inspector General's Department selected a site 16 miles north of present-day Las Cruces, and over the next 18 months, the new post of Fort Selden slowly took shape. It was named in honor of Col. Henry R. Selden, who died of illness in February 1865 while serving as commanding officer of Fort Union, near Las Vegas.
Constructed largely by soldiers from the small Army garrison in Albuquerque, the new post was built in a north-south rectangle around a parade ground 400 feet long and 200 feet wide. Officers quarters lined the north end of the parade ground, while the commanding officer's quarters and a 12-bed hospital stood on the west.
Barracks for two companies of enlisted men and quarters for senior sergeants formed the south side of the rectangle. On the east were post headquarters, storerooms, a stone prison and corrals for 60 horses. A trader's store, bakery, laundress quarters and armory were built just outside the post perimeter.
Selden's initial garrison of a company of infantry and one of cavalry totaled six officers and 149 enlisted men.
Dreary duty
Decades of movies, television and novels have weaved a lasting aura of romance and glamour around the frontier Army, but the reality was something quite different. Life for the frontier soldier was tough, dreary and monotonous and offered few rewards.
At Fort Selden, a typical Western military post of the era, the troops lived a Spartan existence in structures that offered little comfort. Buildings were one story and constructed of adobe bricks with flat roofs of cottonwood vigas covered with peeled willows held down by a covering of dirt and lime. Floors were merely packed dirt until 1870, when they were finally covered with wood planking.
One of the few amenities at Selden — if it could be called that — was a veranda of poles and brush built onto the quarters of the commanding officer. However, Lydia Spencer Lane, wife of Maj. William Lane, post commander, was unimpressed and noted:
"It's a fine harbor for snakes, scorpions and such things."
In an 1871 report to department headquarters in Santa Fe, Selden's commander complained:
"Buildings and quarters ... have been built from the material offered by the country (adobe), but the material ... disintegrates so fast during summer rains that constant repairs are needed."
Rugged living conditions, barely passable food and meager pay — a private earned $16 a month — were not the only problems for the men of Fort Selden. They also dealt with the monotony of daily garrison routine in the isolation of the southern New Mexico desert.
It was a life of drills, guard duty and work details broken only by occasional patrols into the surrounding countryside and minor Indian problems. Not surprisingly, desertions were common.
As Western military historian Robert Utley wrote:
"He (the frontier soldier) would live in dark, dirty, overcrowded, vermin-infested barracks, sharing a straw-filled mattress with a bunkie. He would eat bad food, badly prepared. He would labor long hours at menial tasks that neither required nor helped to inculcate military skills.
"He would endure strict discipline, fortified by severe and often brutal penalties, for transgressions.
"Occasionally, he would go out on scouts or patrols or even campaigns. Most probably, he would never see combat."
Among the soldiers, a standard joke in the frontier Army advised: "If you want to be well cared for, you must become an inmate of either a military prison or a national cemetery."
Post returns to department headquarters show that in the more than 20 years that Selden was an active duty station, only three soldiers were killed in action against hostile Indians.
Creating far greater problems was the small settlement of Leasburg, adjacent to the southeastern edge of the post.
Homesteaded on 160 acres by Adolph Lea, the small community of 40 people featured four saloons and dance halls, which catered to Selden's garrison. In the first 18 months of the fort's existence, seven soldiers were killed in saloon brawls and knifings — twice the number slain in Indian campaigns.
In late 1868, Selden's commander lamented: "The inhabitants of this town (Leasburg), or most of them, have been a curse to this post, and the records of the cemetery will show that some seven or eight soldiers of this post have been murdered there."
In October 1869, Fort Selden's surgeon complained:
"The plague spot of the vicinity is the small settlement known as Leasburg, where prostitutes and bad characters congregate at times when the troops of the garrison have money. All the venereal disease, which is by no means uncommon here, is directly traceable to this place."
However, Selden was not unscathed by Indian problems.
In February 1869, a band of marauding Apaches drove off part of the fort's cattle herd only two miles from the fort. The following month another band attacked the fort's wood detail on the edge of the post itself.
These raids prompted one annoyed soldier to observe: "That bands of naked, starving Indians should beleaguer a military post as well appointed as Selden is beyond our understanding."
In one of Selden's few combat missions, Capt. George Chilson, in 1873, led a dozen troopers of the 8th Cavalry in pursuit of Apaches who had attacked a ranch in the Organ Mountains, 25 miles southeast of the post.
Chilson's report of the action noted:
"After following for four days, I struck them (the raiders) in a canyon where an engagement ensued resulting in the loss of one man, Corporal Frank Battling, killed; the killing of three Indians and recovery of all stock."
In 1876, a patrol of 25 men of Troop F, 9th Cavalry, led by Capt. Henry Carroll, produced a different result.
Carroll's men were in pursuit of Apaches who were reported raiding in southwest New Mexico after fleeing from the Warm Springs Reservation, west of present-day Truth or Consequences.
After a weeklong chase covering a roundabout route of 150 miles in which Carroll's men found nothing, the captain noted:
"The reports of Indian depredations, I believe, are much exaggerated, and in my opinion, ranch men ... (are) harboring disreputable characters who are much worse than the Indians."
Non-Indian matters also occasionally occupied the men of Fort Selden.
In 1870, the post was alerted to watch for Mexican bandits and scalp hunters raiding into southern New Mexico. Department headquarters ordered that "all armed parties of Mexicans entering the United States for any purpose whatever ... will be arrested and disarmed."
Civil disorders also presented problems.
In August 1871, Lt. Col. Thomas Devin and a troop of the 8th Cavalry were called upon to restore order when a deadly politcal riot erupted in La Mesilla.
Both Democrat and Republican candidates for local offices had scheduled rallies at the same time, and when the two parties marched through town, they clashed. Selden's troopers ended the melee, but not before seven people were killed and 30 injured.
First abandonment
By 1877, the Army determined that the virtual non-existence of Indian problems in southern New Mexico had largely diminished the need for Selden.
As a result, on Feb. 8, 1877, an order to the post commander from the Military Department of the Missouri, which included New Mexico, directed:
"The department commander authorizes you to remove the larger portion of the force now at Fort Selden to such other post in your district as you may deem best. You are, however, not to consider Selden abandoned."
When the garrison transferred to Fort Bliss at El Paso, one lieutenant and 12 troopers of the 9th Cavalry were left behind as a caretaker force. Soon, they also were gone. In July 1878, a one-sentence dispatch ordered:
"The Post of Fort Selden will be abandoned."
For a brief time, the fort was used as a stagecoach and mail station, but in the 1880s, Geronimo, the much-feared Chiracahua Apache leader, bolted from the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona and launched the final years of the Apache wars. The military, fearing that events could spill over into southern New Mexico, ordered Selden reoccupied.
In December 1880, a troop of the 9th Cavalry and a company of the 15th Infantry moved into the post and began reconstruction of many buildings that had fallen into disrepair. For another 10 years, until 1890, Selden would be an active post.
It was during this period of the fort's new lease on life that it recorded its most famous resident.
In 1884, Capt. Arthur MacArthur, 13th Infantry, was assigned as post commander. With him was his wife and two sons, Arthur III, 7, and Douglas, 4. Young Douglas, of course, would become General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, one of the nation's few five-star generals and the hero of three wars.
In his memoirs, MacArthur wrote that it was at Fort Selden that he and his brother "learned to ride and shoot, even before we learned to read and write."
The MacArthurs spent two years at Selden before Capt. MacArthur was transferred to Fort Wingate, near Gallup. Today, vistors to Selden can inspect the remains of the MacArthur quarters, which are clearly marked.
Super post
By late 1886, the frontier was rapidly changing. Geronimo's surrender to Brig. Gen. Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon in Arizona ended the nation's long Indian wars, and the Army was no longer deemed vital to the survival of the many growing towns and settlements.
As a result, Lt. Gen. William T. Sherman, Army commander-in-chief, ordered a consolidation of six military posts in southern New Mexico and eastern Arizona. He favored a giant, one-square-mile installation large enough to accommodate six troops of cavalry and six companies of infantry.
Sherman further ordered that the post be located near the junction of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific railroads in southern New Mexico.
For a time, Fort Selden was the leading candidate for the site of the new "super post," but because the railroads had brought spectacular growth to the El Paso area, Fort Bliss, which remains a major military station today, was selected.
On Jan. 20, 1891, Lt. James Brett, commanding a small caretaker force at Selden, filed the final post return, which reported:
"All public property from this post having been disposed of, it was abandoned on this date."
Fort Selden had passed into history.
State monument
For decades, the ruins of the historic post melted under the ravages of rain, snow and wind. Vandals, souvenir hunters and treasure-seekers added to the demise.
In 1963, the land encompassing Fort Selden was donated to the state by Harry N. Bailey, a longtime resident of the area. In 1970, the post was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1973, it became a state monument under the auspices of the Museum of New Mexico.
Repair and stabilization programs have slowed deterioration of the fort, and today, more than a century after abandonment, substantial ruins remain as a salute to the frontier soldiers who served there and as a graphic reminder of our heritage.
As historian David Lavender wrote:
"For it is by knowing where we have been as a nation that we are better able to understand ourselves today."
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