The Past as Prologue

Boosters say the best is yet to come for historic Fort Bayard, with a future as an engine of economic growth as vital as the fort once was to guarding the frontier. But time is running out.

By David A. Fryxell

Charlie Deans is handing out blue dots, 10 to a sheet. Deans, who works for a Santa Fe firm called Community by Design, has driven down to Silver City for the day to coordinate a pair of public meetings on the future of Fort Bayard, the National Historic Landmark southeast of Silver City established by "Buffalo Soldiers" in 1866. He's set up a half-dozen posters on easels in the hallway outside the county-commission meeting room at the Grant County Administration Building.

Established in 1866, Fort Bayard became a National Historic Landmark in 2004. (Community by Design photo)

Some of the posters have large blank areas for public comments–Deans is also handing out magic markers. "It's the power of the pen," Deans says with a faint smile to a new arrival who's still affixing a red-and-white nametag.

Two of the posters itemize 45 ideas for future uses of the historic fort, gathered at community meetings this fall. The blue dots are for "voting" for the ideas attendees think are most worth pursuing, to help prioritize and narrow down the list.

"If you have any new ideas, you can write them down, too," Deans explains to a silver-haired woman whose head barely reaches his biceps. He's a lanky, mustachioed fellow who looks like somebody you'd expect to whip out an acoustic guitar and croon folk songs, not help compose public policy. But his easy-going manner is useful in gently herding the crowd that's beginning to cluster. He adds, "That's not something we're really encouraging, though, as 45 seems like a lot already."

As the woman, newly armed with blue dots and marker, heads for the semi-circle of posters, Deans turns to answer a question from another elderly female attendee. "If you feel strongly about something, yes, you can put all 10 by one idea," he tells her. "There's no dot policeman."

The most critical question of the afternoon, though, may be the one from a puzzled man who's wandered over–perhaps attracted by the crowd and easels, perhaps by the free sandwiches–after completing some county business: What's this all about?

Deans tries to give him the Reader's Digest condensed version: "In 18 months they're going to close the hospital that's now at Fort Bayard and move it. The state doesn't know what to do with the fort." He indicates a small stack of copies of an 11-page report his firm helped prepare, working with a 20-member steering committee, the Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments (SWCOG) and the Grant County Economic Development Coalition for Progress (GCEDCP). "This proposes deeding the fort to a trust or commission appointed by the governor, with the intent of making the fort sustainable financially–with businesses, restaurants, a destination."

He takes a breath and adds, "It costs about $400,000 a year in maintenance just to keep Fort Bayard running."

In the short term, at least, that represents an even bigger challenge than figuring out where best to place the blue dots of Fort Bayard's future. Although the "Fort Bayard Preservation & Development Plan" was prepared in response to a request by Gov. Bill Richardson and Grant County's powerful, veteran state senator, Ben Altamirano, when the legislature convenes this month the future of Fort Bayard will join a multi-million-dollar laundry list of other requests from around the state. Even though the plan's goal is to make the fort ultimately self-sustaining, initially the state will have to commit some cash to keep Fort Bayard from being boarded up in 2008.

When the legislature convenes this month, the planning committee will ask for the projected price tag in the draft report for the first three-year phase, a total of $1,205,000. That covers administrative seed money for creating a Fort Bayard Trust ($50,000), development of a management plan ($100,000), preparation of a strategic plan ($55,000) and, most critical and costly, "infrastructure renovation and operation" ($1 million).

Richard Earnheart, who helped spearhead the steering committee and drafted much of the actual plan, worries that the Fort Bayard project won't get the full support it's been promised once the legislature gets down to business. Although he calls the future of Fort Bayard "the most important economic development event in southern New Mexico that I have seen," he adds, "It doesn't have a big enough profile." The danger, according to Earnheart, is that the powers-that-be "will just look away–and this community can't stand any more 'looking away' from our economic problems."

It's hard to hear the echoes of the Buffalo Soldiers in the tiled and polished corridors of the county administration building, to see their horses' hoofprints among the clusters of blue dots beside ideas like "Hiking trails," "Cultural camps," "Vineyard" or even "Buffalo Soldiers Heritage Center." But farther down Hwy. 180, where an early-winter breeze blows scuffy clouds above the orange rooftops and buttery, white-columned buildings of the old fort, you can imagine them still.

From here at Fort Bayard, the black Buffalo Soldiers and their white officers rode out to do their duty in the Indian Wars–soldiers like Corporal Clinton Greaves of the 9th Cavalry. When a confab with a band of Apaches at a hideout in the Florida Mountains turned into a hand-to-hand combat, Cpl. Greaves single-handedly saved his outnumbered band of five Buffalo Soldiers, Lieutenant Henry H. Wright and three Navaho scouts. According to an 1877 Grant County Herald account, Greaves managed "to shoot and bash a gap through the swarming Apaches, permitting his companions to break free." All returned safely to Fort Bayard, and Greaves was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his gallantry. Ten other Buffalo Soldiers, from Fort Bayard and other forts, likewise won the Medal of Honor for their service in New Mexico.

It was Buffalo Soldier troops from Company B, 125th US Colored Infantry, under the command of Lieutenant James M. Kerr, who had established Fort Bayard in the first place, on August 21, 1866. The post was named in honor of General G.D. Bayard, who had served in New Mexico and Arizona prior to the Civil War, in which he died from wounds received during the Battle of Fredericksburg. Fort Bayard was part of a string of New Mexico outposts built to protect settlers and miners as well as travelers to California, and followed the building of Fort Cummings to the north in 1863.

What distinguishes Fort Bayard from other frontier outposts of its kind, however, is that it has been continuously occupied for more than 140 years. After the Indian Wars wound down and the soldiers left, the site became a medical center. On August 28, 1899, 33 years and a week after the fort's founding, the US War Department authorized the Surgeon General to establish a general hospital for use as a military sanatorium to treat soldiers suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis contracted during the Spanish-American War. The Silver City area had already became a haven for "lungers" seeking relief in the clear, high-desert air, with sanatoriums such as Saint Joseph's, the Sunnyside, the Pines and the Afro-Tubercular; Fort Bayard was the army's first tuberculosis sanatorium. Most of the Classical Revival, Colonial Revival and Mission Revival buildings that survive at the fort date from this turn-of-the century sanatorium period.

The War Department closed the Fort Bayard sanatorium in 1920 as part of a consolidation program, and the Public Health Service briefly took over the facility. In 1922, the Veterans Bureau moved into the fort, designated Veterans Hospital Number 55. The Veterans Bureau became part of the newly created Veterans Administration, or "VA," in 1930, when the government also established what's now Fort Bayard National Cemetery.

Soldiers had been buried at Fort Bayard since its first year, of course. On Oct. 10, 1866, Sergeant David H. Boyd of the 3rd US Cavalry became the first identified soldier interred there; an earlier, "unknown" burial preceded him, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Among the 3,732 burials (through the end of fiscal 2005) on the site are two Medal of Honor recipients and civilian Walter Foote Sellers, author of the poem, "The Kneeling Nun," who was the stepson of retired Brigadier General Walter I. Duggan. (On Sellers' headstone is engraved, "Ah, Me, the World Seems Lonelier Today.") The cemetery–one of only two national cemeteries in New Mexico–now covers 18.8 acres, which includes a 3.95-acre addition from the state of New Mexico in the 1990s. It operates under the direction of Fort Bliss National Cemetery in El Paso.

The fort's medical mission also continues, with Fort Bayard Medical Center operating as a long/intermediate-term and skilled-care facility. The center provides various geriatric and orthopedic services plus home-care case management and chemical dependency treatment. Following the 1965 closure of the veterans hospital, most of the site and all of the hospital-era buildings were transferred to the state of New Mexico, which has operated the facility ever since. (The remainder of the land was transferred to the Gila National Forest.) The state's property-management department owns the 468-acre site and leases it to the health department.

After a recent management investigation and shakeup, the health department contracted in November 2005 with a private firm, GEO Care, to operate the 230-bed Fort Bayard Medical Center. Under the arrangement, GEO Care manages the center, while the 368 employees there remain on the state payroll. GEO Care, based in Boca Raton, Fla., also manages four Florida facilities–a state hospital, a forensic mental-health center, the Florida Civil Commitment Center and a jail. GEO Care is part of the global GEO Group, which runs correctional facilities in North America (including prisons in Santa Rosa and Hobbs, NM, and one under construction in Clayton, NM), Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. GEO Care's current contract to run the Fort Bayard Medical Center runs through 2007.

But it's already contracted to run a replacement center, just off the historic Fort Bayard campus. On July 1, 2006, GEO Care began the design, construction and financing, through tax-exempt public bonds, of a new $30 million facility to be built south of the national cemetery and north of the industrial park along Hwy. 180. The new medical center, with groundbreaking expected early this year and completion scheduled by the beginning of 2008, will be leased to the state. GEO Care will manage it under a five year-contract that runs through 2013.

The pending relocation of the medical center will leave the state of New Mexico with an historic white elephant on its hands. Barring some better idea, says Gloria Terrazas-Barnes of the Southwest New Mexico Council of Governments, "they told us Fort Bayard would simply be boarded up and remain closed forever."

"I don't know of anything quite like it," says Community by Design's Charlie Deans. "Closing a major state facility. It's such a unique asset, but the state does not know what to do with it next."

Terrazas-Barnes suppresses a small shiver. "It felt like they were going to put it in a casket," she adds, "all those beautiful buildings."

The trouble is, many of Fort Bayard's stately old buildings have fallen into disrepair–despite the fort becoming a New Mexico Historic District in 2002 and gaining National Historic Landmark status in 2004. According to the National Park Service's National Historic Landmark program, "The Red Cross building, Servants Quarters and Nurse's Quarters are threatened. The State of New Mexico has not had a priority to maintain these buildings for many years. However, in the meantime, these buildings have been rented to Fort Bayard Medical Center employees. The Red Cross building (2,670 square feet) sits in an area that is continually wet due to an overflow reservoir which is leaking. Therefore, the foundation of this building is in danger. The electrical systems in the buildings are not to code, and the plumbing is probably also not to code. The buildings are deteriorated and some contain asbestos flooring."

Cecilia Bell, president of the Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society, says bluntly, "The state of New Mexico has not put a drop of paint on the outside of those buildings since it took over in 1965. Those buildings are in dire straits."

Concern about the condition of the fort crystallized in 1997, when a group began meeting to plan a celebration of the centennial of the 1899 changeover from fort to medical center. That led to a dream of creating a museum to preserve the fort's story and to an annual Fort Bayard Days, held each September beginning in 1999. Both efforts were spearheaded by the Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society, which has also sponsored teas at the fort and regular tours. Most recently, the society has worked with Silver High School's Learn and Serve program to prepare 20 interpretive signs for placement–"as soon as we get the OK to dig holes," says Bell–around the parade ground and by the old nurses' quarters and the cemetery.

Even before news of the pending closure, the society and local community leaders had begun looking at the long-term future of Fort Bayard. But that planning switched into high gear in August, when Gov. Richardson visited Grant County for a community meeting with Sen. Altamirano. Terrazas-Barnes remembers, "The governor said we needed to get a committee together to address the future of Fort Bayard. I raised my hand, introduced myself, and said that we were already working on a pre-application for the state economic development department. I told the whole story. Sen. Altamirano said he'd like to see the Council of Governments take the lead in the whole process."

There was just one catch: The governor wanted a preliminary plan in time for the start of the next legislative session.

A 20-member steering committee was swiftly formed, holding the first of a half-dozen meetings by October. Three community workshops were also convened to elicit ideas for future uses of the fort. Funding from the Grant County Economic Development Coalition for Progress enabled the group to hire Charlie Deans and Community by Design to facilitate and polish the plan. Deans was already familiar with the area, having worked on a comprehensive plan for the town of Bayard and on a plan for Silver City's San Vicente Historic District.

"There was a lot of fast work. We worked furiously, and the steering committee was wonderful," Terrazas-Barnes says. "When we first started, we asked quite a few people at the state level to come down and discuss the possibilities. Stuart Ashman, secretary of the Department of Cultural Affairs, said we needed a comprehensive plan–that's what really started it. We worked with Bill Hume in the governor's office and with SIGRED (Silver City-Grant County Economic Development Corporation)."

Congressman Steve Pearce suggested that the group look at the example of the Presidio in San Francisco, where backers had created a trust to help the historic site became self-sustaining. That example became crucial to the preservation and development plan. "Why reinvent the wheel?" as Terrazas-Barnes puts it.

The steering committee wouldn't attempt to dictate what Fort Bayard should become, but would rather focus on a process for working out that future and for keeping the fort open and preserved in the meantime. "The point will be how," says Terrazas-Barnes, "not what."

Still, the immediate next steps if the state buys into the plan are pretty clear. First, a not-for-profit Fort Bayard Trust would be created to manage the property, receive funding necessary to keep the fort open and begin assessing renovation needs. After an initial three-year period, the trust would negotiate the conditional leases of all the fort's structures with the State Property Control Office and begin searching for tenants. The plan notes, "These long-term lease agreements are critical to the success or failure of the adaptive re-use of Fort Bayard. Without rental concessions from Property Control, restoration would be cost prohibitive on most or all of the buildings. A formula of 'restoration in lieu of rent' would be necessary to be devised that would be attractive to businesses and personal restorers alike."

Terrazas-Barnes adds that the planners would also move quickly to expand the national cemetery–a color-coded map shows almost five times the current cemetery space marked off to the south and west–and to seek a state park designation for an area of similar size adjacent to the cemetery at the north end of the fort.

Cecilia Bell of the historic society is impatient with this approach, however. "A study is well and good–it shows community input," she says, "but we're talking about buildings made of wood in an arid area that are deteriorating. This three-year plan does nothing to save Fort Bayard, to actually save the buildings. We've got to start restoration; the sooner we start, the cheaper it will be."

A particular priority, according to Bell, should be the fort's water pipes, which date from the early 1900s, along with working with the forest service and Gila WoodNet (see the March 2006 Desert Exposure) on a long-term heating solution. "If the water and heat get shut off, it won't be easy to start them up again."

She adds that the legislature actually appropriated $50,000 in capital-outlay funds in 2005 and another $100,000 last session to begin restoration of the fort's historic theater. "But that money is all still in Santa Fe."

Bell doesn't think Fort Bayard can wait until GEO Care's operation moves in 2008. "I see two more years of damage," she says. "For the buildings that are sitting empty, there's not a lot of security. Somebody could be setting up a meth lab in there. All it takes is one match and the whole thing is gone."

She insists that the community needs to push for designating a key portion of the site as a state park immediately. "Every day we waste, anything can happen," Bell says. "As a community, we need to push together for that."

Fort Bayard advocates do agree on the importance of finding a new "anchor tenant" for the site, to insure its long-term economic viability. "By the end of next year, we'd like to be able to focus on one or two specific projects," says Terrazas-Barnes. As shown by the 45 ideas attracting a mix of blue dots at the community meeting, however, deciding what the new use or uses of Fort Bayard should be is the, well, sticking point.

Bell, for example, thinks the current hospital facility should become a vocational-technical training center; that's also among the ideas listed in the preservation and development plan. Such a school could train plumbers and carpenters, Bell says, not only in their trades but in historic preservation–using the fort's old buildings as a hands-on laboratory. The site could also train technical nurses and hospitality workers and serve as a culinary school, she adds, supporting a restaurant or cafeteria and a bed and breakfast. She also envisions the old Quonset hut being transformed into a World War II heritage center, even resurrecting the old soda fountain that once served the fort. Such a center could commemorate the area's Bataan Death March soldiers, Bell suggests, as well as the 90 German POWs incarcerated at the fort for two years during the war.

Others have other ideas, not all of them as immediately clear. "What's a geocache?" several community-meeting attendees wonder aloud, pausing in mid-dot-placement. The list ranges from cultural/historic resources such as various museums and cultural centers, to tourism and eco-tourism (bicycle trails, golf course, night-sky viewing), to money-generating enterprises such as a conference center, gift shops and even "movie studio/production company." Other ideas have an ecological bent, from biomass energy to solar power.

"It might be possible to develop some sort of holistic, healing environment," Terrazas-Barnes adds, "because of the beauty of the natural surrounding as well as its history as a hospital. That has a lot of potential."

A Buffalo Soldiers heritage group is also very interested in locating its headquarters at Fort Bayard, she says. "I can see all sorts of events being held there. It could be a convention center, which we don't have in the area." Despite recent rumors, an Indian casino is not on the list, however, and Terrazas-Barnes confirms that a casino "was never seriously entertained" for the fort.

To date, the possible anchor tenants for Fort Bayard that have gotten the most serious consideration include a vo-tech school, an International Fire Safety Academy and a base for the national Elderhostel program. According to Terrazas-Barnes, Western New Mexico University officials have agreed to help look into the fire academy and Elderhostel possibilities.

"The key is finding the right partners who are willing to bring money to the table," she adds. "A public-private partnership, that's the key."

In addition to a few major tenants, Terrazas-Barnes envisions a variety of smaller enterprises, including leasing buildings to the public as residences. "The Presidio turned military housing into rental housing. I'd give an arm and a leg to go live out there at Fort Bayard."

As the process goes on, she adds, more good ideas will emerge. "I can see it taking on a life of its own," she says, "as things fall into place and opportunities arise." Already, people from various local organizations–such as the archery club–are contacting her about getting in on the future of Fort Bayard. "It's inclusive to the whole community. If you have an idea, I say, 'Tell me how we can do it.' As a community, we tend to have a lot of great ideas, but we are not always as strong on implementation."

At the county building, Gerald Schultz has just finished casting his blue-dot votes. He steps back to ponder the easels and the knots of people who want a say in Fort Bayard's future. A retired hydrologist from Denver, Schultz became active in the Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society after moving to Southwest New Mexico. "I'm the guy walking around with the camcorder at Fort Bayard Days," he explains. He grew up in North Dakota, he adds, where the state has done a good job of preserving its historic forts.

How best to make sure Fort Bayard is also around for future generations to see? "It's not so much that I personally think we should do this or that," Scultz says, "as it is figuring out the biggest bang for the buck. You want something that's self-sustaining economically. Bill Gates is not just going to throw a dart and hit Fort Bayard."

"We want to preserve the historical value we have here in the community," Terrazas-Barnes says, "to pass it on to ongoing generations and to people outside the area. Developing this plan has been a true grassroots effort to preserve and develop this historic treasure. The governor said he wanted this done, and the community rose to the challenge. It's been the best committee I've worked on in a long time–people have a real passion for this."

Ultimately, though, Terrazas-Barnes echoes Schultz's man-on-the-street opinion: The future of Fort Bayard will depend on dollars and cents. When asked what the biggest challenge will be in implementing the steering-committee plan, she doesn't hesitate: "Funding. It comes down to funding. We really have to hustle."

As for getting startup funding from the legislature, Terrazas-Barnes says, "I'll be honest: If the governor is for it, there's a good chance. I know Sen. Altamirano has some ideas. But you know politics, how things can turn out. Since it was initiated by the governor, I'm hopeful.

"It's really important to get something done starting this year," she adds. "We have to be ready to roll by 2008."

But that's just the beginning of a long journey, of course. Phase three of the Fort Bayard Preservation and Development Plan is simply labeled, "Years 5-and on."

Gloria Terrazas-Barnes gives a gentle laugh and says, "This project will probably outlive me."

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