Fort Fillmore

Fort Fillmore
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location:	Doña Ana County, New Mexico, USA
Nearest city:	Mesilla, New Mexico
Area:	The post was built on sand hills that were above the Rio Grande, the Rio Grande would later change its course making the fort about 1 mile from its course. This caused the army to have to use water wagons to supply the post with water, and made it hard to defend in event of attack.
Architect:	Fort Fillmore was originally constructed in the jacal style upright wood posts plastered over with adobe, later substantial adobe walls were erected. Much of the work on the fort was done by the soldiers with the assistance of local Mexican laborers who made the adobe bricks.
NRHP Reference#:	74001196
Added to NRHP:	July 30, 1974

Fort Fillmore was a fortification established by Col Edwin Vose Sumner in September of 1851 near Mesilla in what is now New Mexico, primarily to protect settlers and traders traveling to California. Travelers in the Westward Migration were under constant threat from Indian attack, and a network of forts was created by the US Government to protect and encourage westward expansion. Fort Fillmore was intended to protect a corridor plagued by Apache attacks where several migration routes converged between El Paso and Tucson to take advantage of Apache Pass.

Fort Fillmore would serve as an operating base for units of the 1st Dragoons, briefly the 2d Dragoons, Regiment of Mounted Rifles, and the 3d and briefly the 8th Infantry Regiments. It was for a time headquarters of the 3d Infantry Regiment. The troops were active in the Gila Expedition of 1857 and in operations against the Apaches in the Sacramento Mountains. In one foray Captain Henry Stanton, namesake of Fort Stanton NM, was killed near the Rio Penasco River. His grave was one of the few to be identified when the abandoned post was inspected in 1869. Most of the soldiers and civilians interred in the post cemetery are still buried there on a sand ridge south east of the remains of the post. A fence and flagpole now are located on the cemetery's site.

Possibly the most famous soldier who served at Fort Fillmore was Captain George Pickett. Pickett is best remembered for leading the fateful charge on July 3rd, 1863 at the battle of Gettysburg. Later Union General Ambrose Burnside used the fort as a supply point when he drilled geo-thermal wells about fifteen miles west of the post in 1855.^{[citation needed]}.

The surrender of Fort Fillmore on July 26, 1861 to Confederate soldiers under the command of Lt Col John Baylor briefly secured the Arizona Territory of the Confederate States of America which had been formed earlier that year in nearby Mesilla. Fort Fillmore was abandoned by the Confederates soon after and no attempt appears to have been made by the Union to reoccupy it.

The fort was officially closed by the Union in October of 1862, but sources mention Fort Fillmore as a way point along several major routes throughout the period of western expansion. The Upper and Lower Emigrant Trails converged in El Paso and, along with the Butterfield, Pacific and Overland Trails, passed through the corridor Fort Fillmore was erected to defend.

The remains of the fort were leveled at some later date after a failed attempt by the owner to sell or trade it to the State of New Mexico as a park. A grove of pecan trees now stands on the approximate location of the fort.

External links

• Fort Fillmore Lithograph 1854, Lithograph of Fort Fillmore by Carl Schuchard. Schuchard traveled with a crew from the Texas Western Railroad Company that was surveying along the 32nd parallel for a transcontinental railroad route.
• FORT FILLMORE
• Looking for Fort Fillmore
• History of Las Cruces: Retreat from Fort Fillmore