Fort Wingate facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Fort Wingate
McKinley County, near Gallup, New Mexico
Fort Wingate in the 1870s
Coordinates	35°06′45″N 107°52′58″W / 35.112466°N 107.882652°W / 35.112466; -107.882652
Site information
Controlled by	New Mexico
Condition	ammunition depot, storage facility
Site history
Built	1862
Built by	United States
In use	1862 - 1993
Battles/wars	Apache Wars Navajo Wars
Garrison information
Past commanders	Kit Carson William Redwood Price
Garrison	Navajo Scouts Apache Scouts 4th Cavalry 8th Cavalry 9th Cavalry and 13th Infantry 15th Infantry
Occupants	United States Army

Apache Scouts visiting Fort Wingate during the 1880s.

Fort Wingate was a military installation near Gallup, New Mexico. There were two other locations in New Mexico called Fort Wingate: Seboyeta, New Mexico (1849–1862) and San Rafael, New Mexico (1862–1868). The most recent Fort Wingate (1868–1993) was established at the former site of Fort Lyon, on Navajo territory, initially to control and "protect" the large Navajo tribe to its north. The Fort at San Rafael was the staging point for the Navajo deportation known as the Long Walk of the Navajo. From 1870 onward the garrison near Gallup was concerned with Apaches to the south, and through 1890 hundreds of Navajo Scouts were enlisted at the fort.

Fort Wingate supplied 100 tons of Composition B high explosives to the Manhattan Project for use in the first Trinity test and became an ammunition depot "Fort Wingate Depot Activity" from World War II until it was closed by the 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Environmental cleanup of UXO, perchlorate, and lead as well as land transfer continue to the present day.

History

Apache Scouts visiting Fort Wingate during the 1880s.

• 1860 A temporary post, Fort Fauntleroy, was established at Bear Springs (Ojo del Oso), a place visited by Navajos. Later it was renamed Fort Lyon, when General Thomas T. Fauntleroy, for whom the fort was originally named, joined the Confederates.
• 1862 The post was renamed Fort Wingate after the abandonment of an army post of that name located sixty miles away in San Rafael, New Mexico, also known as "Bikyaya" or "El Gallo," and which was originally located at Seboyeta. It was named for Major Benjamin Wingate, 5th U.S. Infantry, who received wounds to his legs during the Battle of Valverde.
  • September General Edward Canby ordered a new fort to be placed at the headwaters of the Gallo River. It was designed to house four companies of troops.
• 1864 Colonel Kit Carson was ordered by Canby to bring four companies of the First New Mexico Volunteers to the fort to control the Navajo.
• 1865 there were 3,089 troops in the New Mexico Military District, 135 at Fort Wingate.
• It was the staging point for Navajos being sent on the Long Walk
• 1873 - 1886 Participated in Apache Wars with troops and recruited Navajo Scouts.
• 1878 there were 137 troops at Fort Wingate.
• Was asked to settle disagreements between Navajo and citizens in New Mexico 1868-1895.
• 1891 Assisted Arizona units with angry Hopis
• 1907 Two troops of the 5th Cavalry went from Fort Wingate to the Four Corners area after some armed Navajo. This was the last armed expedition the US Government ever made against the Navajo. One Navajo was killed and the rest escaped
• 1911 A company of cavalry went from Ft. Wingate to Chaco Canyon and camped there several days to quell a possible uprising by Navajo
• 1914 Over 2,000 Mexican soldiers and their families were given refuge at the fort from the Mexican Civil War
• 1918 Fort Wingate focus turned from Navajo to World War I .
• 1940 Used to store munitions from World War II onward.
• 1950 Bureau of Indian Affairs given part of the land for Indian boarding school
• Redstone and the Pershing 1 missiles were tested among other things at Wingate
• 1993 the Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC) closes the post. Environmental cleanup and land transfer to the surrounding community continues to the present day.

Notable people

• Lt. Charles B. Gatewood (1853–1896) led many patrols out of Wingate and later convinced Geronimo to surrender
• 1881–85 General Douglas MacArthur lived at the fort as an infant, with his father, a Captain in command of Company K, 13th US Infantry.
• 1889–90 General John J. (Black Jack) Pershing served as Lieutenant at the fort.

Education

There are two Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) boarding schools in the area: Wingate Elementary School, and Wingate High School.

As of 1956^[update] the Wingate Elementary dormitory is a former military barracks that also houses students at Wingate High. In 1968 the girls' dormitory had 125 girls; the Associated Press stated that the dormitory lacked decoration and personal effects and was reflective of a campaign to de-personalize Native American students. At the time the school strongly discouraged students from speaking Navajo and wanted them to only speak English. Circa 1977 it opened a 125-student $90,000 building which used a solar heating system.

The non-BIE school district is Gallup-McKinley County Public Schools. It is zoned to Indian Hills Elementary School, Kennedy Middle School, and Hiroshi Miyamura High School.

Images for kids

• 

  In 1895 Second Lieutenant Cornelius C. Smith, a Medal of Honor recipient, posed with his favorite horse, Blue, in front of his quarters.

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  A Navaho silversmith, known as Jake among the whites, but called by the Navahoes Náltsos Nigéhani, or Paper-carrier, because in his youth he was employed as a mail-carrier between Fort Wingate and Fort Defiance.