Site preserves the second of three forts constructed on the site beginning in 1851, as well as the ruins of the third

How to Get There

Overview

Fort Union National Monument is a unit of the National Park Service, located north of Watrous in Mora County, New Mexico. The national monument was founded on June 28, 1954.

Eric T Gunther, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons ; Image Size Adjusted

The site preserves the second of three forts constructed on the site beginning in 1851, as well as the ruins of the third. Also visible is a network of ruts from the Mountain and Cimarron Branches of the old Santa Fe Trail.

There is a visitor center with exhibits about the fort and a film about the Santa Fe Trail. The altitude of the Visitor Center is 6760 feet (2060 m). A 1.2-mile (1.9-kilometre) trail winds through the fort's adobe ruins.

The fort was established in the New Mexico Territory, on the Santa Fe Trail. It was provisioned in large part by farmers and ranchers of what is now Mora County (formally created in 1860), including the town of Mora, where the grist mill established by Ceran St. Vrain in 1855 produced most of the flour used at the fort.

Eric T Gunther, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons ; Image Size Adjusted

The fort served as the headquarters of the 8th Cavalry in the early 1870s and as the headquarters of the 9th Cavalry in the late 1870s during the Apache Wars.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Fort Union National Monument", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0