April 18, 2022
We spent the Easter weekend visiting Aimee's mom in Amarillo. A radio show we heard during the long drive made me chuckle about the origins of this religious holiday. Growing up I never questioned the name Easter or the association with Bunnies and Colored Eggs. It turns out it was originally a pagan Spring fertility festival. Like Christmas with its Santa and decorated trees, nobody wanted to give up their annual parties so religious leaders had to adapt and co-opt rather than the other way around.
On the return journey, I am always looking for something interesting to break up the long drive. This time we made a short detour in the New Mexico mountains, following Billy the Kid Trail, past the Lincoln Historic Site, to Fort Stanton State Historic Site. It sits at a very pleasant 6500ft in the broad Rio Bonito Valley. This is stereotypical cowboy country perfect for any Western film.
I wasn’t expecting much but this Fort now in the middle of nowhere had a very long history. It was established in 1855 to protect settlers from Apache raids. But its lucrative beef and timber supply contracts kicked off the infamous Lincoln County War that gave rise to Billy the Kid.
The fort hosted a star-studded list of army veterans including famed scout Kit Carson and WWI Commander Blackjack Pershing. Lew Wallace, Union general and New Mexico governor wrote part of his novel, Ben-Hur, here.
We walked around the large parade ground checking out some of the exhibits in the perimeter buildings. Little of its early history remains because the fort with its enduring stone structures went on to have second and third careers. In 1899 it became a military hospital and soon became the government’s first Tuberculosis sanitarium. At the time it was thought the cure to the “White Plague" was fresh mountain air. The hospital wards look like a time-warp and are a great glimpse into how much life and technology has changed in the last hundred years.
During WWII, the fort accidentally became a German Internment camp. At the onset of the war, a German luxury cruise ship sailing the Caribbean became the object of confiscation by the British. After offloading the tourists in Cuba, the ship was scuttled, and the crew rescued by the US Navy. The distressed sailors were housed here awaiting repatriation. In the interim, Germany declared war on us, and the crew became prisoners. These industrious Germans spent their time building a home here, including a nice swimming pool.
