Fort Stanton 

History of Lincoln County Post Offices
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Note: Post offices are listed in chronological order in the following pages. Where name of post office is given in smaller type and with a star[*] there is no further information available other than official dates and names found in postal records.

Fort Stanton
Lincoln County's Oldest Post Office
by M. J. and Zoe Price
Conclusion by Francis Shaw and Pauline Britton

A colorful past--not always serene--reflects the history of the reservation and the Post Office. It begins in that period when marauding bands of Apaches terrorized the southern half of the territory lying immediately north of the Mexican border and extending from their strongholds in the Sacramento Mountains on the east and the Galiura range on the west. The Jornado del Mureto extending north on the eastern mesa of the Rio Grande from El Paso del Norte as the main route for trade and travel between Mexico and Santa Fe from the days of Coronado and Onate. It was still the "Journey of Death" when Fort Stanton was established. The road crossed this Apache hunting ground about the place where Las Cruces was subsequently built on the spot marked by the crosses of the massacred.

Ralph Emerson Twichell in the second volume of his "Leading Facts of New Mexico History" tells of trouble with the Mescaleros in 1854. "The army made many campaigns against them with such success that they sued for peace." In June of 1855 Governor Merriwether made a treaty designating a reservation near the Fort and establishing a new post. It was named for a young Capitan Henry W. Stanton of the 1st Dragoons who had been killed in the campaign on the 19th of January that year. The treaty was not approved, according to Twichell but an agency was maintained at the Fort and at least some of the Mescaleros kept the peace. (1)

An account of the opening of a wagon route by Colonel Miles, who commanded the campaigns against the Apaches appears in a report of the Secretary of War for 1855. This wagon route started from Fort Fillmore on the Jornado del Muerto about fifteen miles south of the Organ Mountain Pass and crossed the Tularosa basin to the junction of the Ruidoso with the Bonito. Here it joined the route opened by Brevet Major Carlton and his cooperating force from Albuquerque. (2)

Thus was established the route by which mails were safely dispatched by buckboard and stage to serve the southern half of New Mexico territory. Each of these two routes were about 150 miles in length.

Fort Stanton was built in the high valley on the bank of the Bonito, a few miles north of the junction in the scenic triangle bounded on north by the Capitan Mountains, on the west by the more lofty Sierra Blancas and closed in by rolling foothills and mesas between the two. Mountain streams furnished an abundance of water and fish. Deer, antelope and bear were plentiful. For the century of its history, Fort Stanton has been singularly blessed in this arid land.

Less than two years after the Fort was established the first Postmaster, Davis S. Garland was appointed May 5, 1857. (3) this office was discontinued the following August and re-established within a month, September 15, 1857, with George S. Beall as postmaster. In 1861 the United States forces burned and abandoned the Post on the approach of Texas troops under General Sibley. After the defeat and withdrawal of the Confederate forces in 1863 the Post was reoccupied by a garrison of volunteers under Kit Carson. 

The post office was again established in April of 1868 with Lawrence G. Murphy as postmaster. During these eleven first years of the post office it is listed as being in Dona Ana County (4). The following year, 1869, saw the original Lincoln County established. In the remaining thirty years during the life of the fort Stanton as an army post eleven postmasters are listed in the Post Office department records.

When the Post was re-established after the Civil War it was the center of much gaiety.  A stage arrived daily from the thriving mining town of White Oaks, bringing the mail from the north and carrying passengers. Another stage brought mail twice weekly form Mesilla, then Capital of Arizona and New Mexico Territories, over the rout opened by Colonel Miles. from Fort Stanton and other driver and horses took the mail and passengers east fifteen miles toward Roswell and west toward Mesilla.

In the thirty year period in which the army was stationed at Fort Stanton, after the Civil War it served as host to settlers traveling from the end of the railroad at La Junta, Colorado by stage and wagon train to southern New Mexico and Arizona. The post office served most of the present Lincoln County. Mr. Fred W. Smith, a native of Waterbury, Connecticut who had worked on the V.V. Ranch of James Cree in 1901, tells of their riding horseback from the present town site of Ruidoso and the ranch headquarters for Little Creek to Fort Stanton to pick up the mail that had come from Mesilla via Tularosa. With the exception of the short intervals during the Civil War the Fort Stanton Office has given continuous service to the present day.

On the pages of a money order record written in longhand, there appears the names of many patrons of the post office form the years 1884 to 1889. On April 22, 1887 John J. Pershing drew a money order at fort Bayard, New Mexico which was cashed by Lt. J. A. Penn. General Pershing started his first tour of duty at Fort Stanton after graduating from west Point. Again on July 13, 1897 from Fort Wingate, New Mexico, J. J. Pershing transmitted another money order for $2.50 to G. L. Scott at fort Stanton which was cashed on the 15th. Mail apparently reached Fort Stanton on the third day in those days from these points in the western part of the state. Also, on October 12, 1895 a W. F. Hoffman sent a money order to S. gray of Gray, New Mexico for White Oaks. there is a marginal note opposite this entry written by the postmaster, Bing Stafford on October 17. "This order was paid to remitter because of the the office drawn upon was not a money order office." the Mr. S. gray to whom the $10.44 money order was made payable was Seaborn Gray who homesteaded the two site of Capitan and named the town for his family.

Other towns evidently served by thy  Fort Stanton post office in these years of 1884 to 1897 appearing in the ledger of "Advices of Money Orders received" are Nogal, Lincoln, Ruidoso, Little Creek, upper Penasco, Parson, bonito, South Fork and Seven Rivers. No doubt some of the orders paid were residents of these towns then serving or working at Fort Stanton. this record of "advices" also serves as a "Who's Who"  in early Lincoln County History . Such names as J. C. Wingate who homesteaded Ruidoso's town site, the Coes, George, frank an Jasper, Thomas and Mrs. Phobe, Amelia Fritz, Seaborn Gray, Mrs. Willian Stanton, M. E. Richardson, James Ed Cree, J. V. Tully and Poe.

The coming of better means of transportation and roads, ended Fort Stanton's usefulness as a military establishment. In the year 1898 it began serving the humanitarian function as a U. S. Marine Hospital for tubercular patients later becoming a U. S. Public Health Hospital. On July 1, 1953 the Federal Government transferred the property to the State of New Mexico and it became a State Hospital for the tubercular.

During the years from 1901 to the present time nine more postmasters have served this office with a colorful past and a useful present.

2-18-'02 Joel I. Buckner

4-25-'13 Joseph H. Gentry 6-2-'61 Frances G. Shaw
7-31-'08 Christian L. Heller 6-19-'52 C. A. Terrell 4-15-'64 Dixie B. Sparks
1-23--'09 Harry A. Freedlander 1-5-'55 M. J. Price 4-30-'71 Pauline Britton

Joseph H. Gentry--postmaster from April 25, 1913 until his retirement on June 19, 1952 came to ft. Stanton due to his physical condition--TB--but was well enough to carry on the office long and well. After his retirement he moved to Roswell an lived at the Nixon Hotel until his death.

C. A. Terrell who followed Mr. Gentry was also a patient of the hospital and served as postmaster until his untimely death in an automobile accident. M. J. Price was appointed postmaster January 5, 1955 and served until hi death in the spring of 1961.

Francs G. Shaw served as postmaster until May 15, 1964, when she was transferred to the Capitan post office. In 1971, Dixie Sparks was elected President of the N.M. chapter of the National Association of Postmasters, but poor health caused her to resign both her office of President, and her post office, April 30, 1971.

In 1966, the patients in the hospital were transferred to Fort Bayard, New Mexico and Fort Stanton became a school for the Mentally retarded. During this transition, the building that had so long housed the post office was condemned. In 1968 the post office was moved from its long occupied home on the Parade grounds, to a building adjacent to the Fort on the East.

Pauline Britton has been a clerk in both Capitan and Fort Stanton offices, before she was appointed as postmaster in1971.

[1] Leading facts of New Mexico History by R. E. Twichell, vol. 2, page 302.
[2] Extract from Report of Secretary of War, 1855 from Hdq. dept. of New Mexico, Santa Fe 5/31/55
[3] History of the Movement to establish a Tubercular sanatorium at Fort Stanton by the U. S. Public Health Service.
[4] Postmaster Appointments records, now in vault of National Archives in Washington, copied by Dr. S. H. Dike of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

7-14-'73 Chas. Bushnell  4-8-'89 Ginfield S. Cobean 2-1-'97 Clara L. Blanchard
12-4-'73 Paul Dowlin 4-23-'90 John C. Delany 2-27-'01 Edward S. Maguire
6-8-'77 William Dowlin 7-14-'92 Mrs. Alina O'neil 7-1-'01 Sophie S. Carrington
5-15-'82 John C. Delany 4-18-'95 Benjamin F. Stafford

(Typist note: The above dates are 1873, 1877, 1882 as opposed to 1973, 1977 etc.--typed as found.) 

Transcribed by C. W. Barnum ©2005