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Fort Union

Fort Union National Monument is a unit of the National Park Service located north of Watrous, Mora County, New Mexico. The national monument was founded on June 28, 1954. 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 6,760 feet. A 1.2-mile  trail winds through the fort's adobe ruins.

Santa Fe trader and author William Davis gave his first impression of the fort in the year 1857:
Fort Union, a hundred and ten miles from Santa Fé, is situated in the pleasant valley of the Moro. It is an open post, without either stockades or breastworks of any kind, and, barring the officers and soldiers who are seen about, it has much more the appearance of a quiet frontier village than that of a military station. It is laid out with broad and straight streets crossing each other at right angles. The huts are built of pine logs, obtained from the neighboring mountains, and the quarters of both officers and men wore a neat and comfortable appearance. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Fort Union, State Highway No. 161, Watrous, Mora County, NM
Contributor: Historic American Buildings Survey - U.S. Department of the Army.

Fort Union, Officers' Quarters by Davidson, Paul Historic American Buildings Survey Most, Jennifer
 Location Mora County New Mexico Watrous photo after 1933.

 View looking east along the pedestrian path between the Commissary Storehouse (HABS No. NM-164-AA) and the Quartermaster Storehouse (HABS No. NM-164-Z)
Fort Union, State Highway No. 161, Watrous, Mora County, NM Creator(s): Rosenthal, James W., creator 2005.

View of the obelisk (altitude marker) at the southwest corner of the Company Quarters (HABS No. NM-164-L)
Fort Union, State Highway No. 161, Watrous, Mora County, NM Creator(s): Rosenthal, James W., creator2005