Fort Tularosa

Fort Tularosa

Fort Tularosa (Catron County), was a military installation formerly located on the site of present day Aragon on New Mexico highway 12. This fort was established in 1872 and named for Tularosa Creek on whose east banks it was located. Fort Tularosa was built to protect the agency of the newly created Apache reservation, intended for about 1,600 Apaches then living at the Warm Springs Apache Reservations. But the Apache did not want to move­: about half of them fled into the hills­. Before Fort Tularosa was completed, the agency moved to Horse Spring, about 18 miles east of the present site, and then in 1874 back to the Warm Springs Reservation, when Fort Tularosa was abandoned. It was never more than a collection of log huts, with a few frame buildings, and no trace of it has survived.

Sources Used:

Julyan, Robert. The Place Names of New Mexico. UNM Press, 1998.

Stanley, F. (pseud.). The Fort Tularosa, New Mexico Story. Pep, TX: F. Stanley, 1968.

Fort Tularosa was one of many short-lived forts established in the nineteenth century.

Reproducing prohibited without express permission from the State Records Center and Archives.

Courtesy of the State Records Center and Archives.