Fort Sumner Historic Site and Bosque Redondo Memorial

State Historic Site On The Pecos River; The Bosque Redondo Reservation Where Roughly 10,000 Navajo And 500 Mescalero Apache Were Held Between 1863 And 1868 After The Long Walk, With A Memorial Building Designed By Navajo Architect David Sloan · Fort Sumner, New Mexico

In 1863 the US Army marched the Navajo people some three hundred miles from their homeland to a stretch of the Pecos River called Bosque Redondo, and held roughly 10,000 of them there with about 500 Mescalero Apache until 1868. The land could not support them, the water was alkaline, the crops failed repeatedly, and thousands died. It is called the Long Walk, and among Navajo and Mescalero people it is the central event of the nineteenth century. The site is now a state historic site, and the memorial building, designed by the Navajo architect David Sloan in the form of a hogan and a tipi meeting, was built with both nations involved in what it says. The fort that guarded the reservation was later sold off, and in 1881 Billy the Kid was shot in one of its converted buildings and buried a few hundred metres away, which is what most passing visitors stop for. The grave and the two private museums nearby are separate operations with separate admissions, and none of them is the reason this site exists.

3647 Billy the Kid Road, Fort Sumner, Fort Sumner, New Mexico, 88119, United States

The memorial building, its exhibits and the grounds are open most days through daylight hours, with at least one weekday closure in most seasons and reduced winter hours. It closes on several state holidays. The fort site itself is an outdoor walk over foundations and interpretive markers and is accessible whenever the gate is open. Billy the Kid's grave and the private museum beside it are a separate operation a short distance away with their own hours and their own admission.

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