Patrick Kelly-Fischer: Thankful For . . .

Civil War sites become harder and harder to come by as you travel west. By the time you get to the Trans-Mississippi, the few preserved locations are often several hours’ driving apart from each other, and pretty far removed from the amenities you might be used to near the battlefields along the I-95 corridor. That dynamic is especially pronounced if, like me, you’ve made a habit of studying the war all the way out in the Southwest.

Sibley’s 1862 invasion of New Mexico covered ground that was sparsely populated at the time – a fact that features prominently in the outcome of that campaign. This is important context for what preservation work looks like in this theater of the war. I’ve driven up and down almost every part of the country, and some of the most isolated stretches of highway I’ve ever driven are in New Mexico.

That challenge makes me all the more grateful that dedicated public servants, historians and preservationists have found ways to keep some pretty remote sites open and accessible to tell the story of this chapter of American history.

Take Jeff, who currently staffs the Bureau of Land Management site at Fort Craig. The fort is located at the edge of the appropriately-named Jornada del Muerto, or “Dead Man’s Journey,” an especially bleak and desolate stretch of desert. ECW readers can look forward to an upcoming Weekender post extolling Fort Craig’s merits. Just finding the fort can be a bit of a challenge, and if you’re visiting, you’d better like dirt roads. It’s almost an hour’s drive from the nearest towns that you’re likely to have even heard of: Truth or Consequences in one direction, or Socorro in the other, both of which are home to just a few thousand people.

I arrived at Fort Craig in the middle of a week-long solo road trip through New Mexico’s Civil War sites. I expected to go on the self-guided tour, refill on water, peruse the bookstore, and take some photos before getting back on the road.

Instead, Jeff and I ended up talking for hours about Sibley’s campaign, the history of the fort, how the war is studied today, and dozens of other topics. We were able to delve into how the fort’s interpretation was making implicit choices about how to tell the story – something you inherently can’t get from an unstaffed site. Talking with Jeff was a highlight of the trip for me, not to mention some badly needed human interaction after days on the road.

Fort Craig is about as close as you can get to the Valverde battlefield. Despite being the largest Civil War battle fought in the Southwest, it was never preserved. The battlefield was largely washed away by the Rio Grande River, in addition to being on private land. Jeff’s on-site expertise helped me navigate the area, which even modern maps and GPS struggle with, and highlighted the extent to which you can see how days of campaigning played out across the vista of the desert landscape that’s on display from the fort.

Or take the curators at Fort Garland, in southern Colorado, which is located in a tiny town that goes by the same name, home to just a few hundred people. When they realized that I (very interested in the fort’s history) had arrived with my wife and dog (not so interested), they went out of their way to point out dog-friendly areas that weren’t in the blazing desert sun.

It was a small gesture, but it helped make this somewhat remote historic site a little more hospitable to us.

These sites aren’t as well known as your Gettysburgs or your Antietams. They probably see fewer visitors in a year than Shiloh or Chancellorsville see in a day. But they still tell an important piece of our country’s history, and make that history accessible to those of us who don’t live further east. None of that would be possible without the extra effort that staff are putting in to keep these remote sites up and running and staffed.

And for that, I’m deeply grateful.