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Fort Craig Historic Site:
Fort Craig was a U.S. Army fort located along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, near Elephant Butte Lake State Park and the Rio Grande in Socorro County, New Mexico. The Fort Craig site was approximately 1,050 feet east-west by 600 feet north-south and was located on 40 acres. In 1894, Fort Craig was sold at auction to the only bidder, the Valverde Land and Irrigation Company. Fort Craig was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. The property was eventually donated to Archaeological Conservancy by the Oppenheimer family and transferred to the Bureau of Land Management in 1981. In 2008, it emerged that 20 bodies had been looted from the cemetery at Fort Craig, and 67 were exhumed and removed by Federal archaeologists to prevent further looting. The exhumations conducted from August to October removed 67 skeletons: 39 men, 2 women and 26 infants and children.
Fort Craig is located 105 miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico and 32 miles
south of Socorro, New Mexico, between Exits 115 and 124 along Interstate 25. A
small visitor center is located at the Fort Craig National Historic Site.
The fictional action taking place in the 1958 Hollywood western genre dramatic
film Fort Massacre is set around Fort Crane, a fictional analogue for Fort
Craig, in 1879. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.