Fort Sumner, New Mexico

History[edit]

Named after former New Mexico Territory military governor Edwin Vose Sumner, U.S. Fort Sumner was a military fort established in 1862 and charged with the internment of nearby Navajo and Mescalero Apache populations from 1863 to 1868. The federal government closed the fort in 1868 and sold its buildings to Lucien Maxwell, a prominent New Mexico landowner, in 1870.^[6] In the latter 1870s Maxwell's son Pete befriended legendary outlaw Billy the Kid,^[7] and it was in his house that Billy was killed by Pat Garrett.^[8] Billy the Kid is buried in the old military cemetery in Fort Sumner,^[9] as is Lucien Maxwell.^[10]


In 1866, the U.S. government was holding thousands of Native American Indians at Fort Sumner after they were subdued by Kit Carson. Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving saw a business opportunity and decided to sell beef to the United States Government so that the captive, displaced, and imprisoned Native Americans could be fed. This enterprise led to the establishment of the Goodnight-Loving Trail.


In March 1908, the Eastern Railway of New Mexico (as subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway) arrived as part of the Belen Cutoff;^[11] now BNSF.


In the 1920s the Transcontinental Air Transport airline built an airfield in Fort Sumner as part of its coast-to-coast air passenger network, but the site was abandoned when the airline's ambitious plans collapsed in the Great Depression. The airfield was reopened by the United States Army Air Forces as a training base during World War II. After the war, the base became the Fort Sumner Municipal Airport, and was chosen as a launch site for NASA's high-altitude balloon program (see Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility).