Fort Stanton

The hospital the panel mentions was a first, and so was what followed it. In 1899 President McKinley turned the empty post over to the Marine Hospital Service, and it became the country's first federal tuberculosis sanatorium, treating merchant seamen and Coast Guard sailors until 1952. In January 1941 it took in the crew of the German liner Columbus, scuttled in 1939, and became the first civilian internment camp in the United States of the war; a Japanese American segregation camp followed. The state took the grounds in 1953 and made them a historic site in 2007.

What the plaque says

Official Scenic Historic Marker Fort Stanton 1855 - 1896 Fort Stanton, named for Captain Henry Stanton, was established to control the Mescalero Apaches. It was burned and evacuated by Union troops in 1861, held briefly by the Confederates, and then reoccupied by Colonel Kit Carson for the Union in 1862. Since its abandonment as a military post, it has been used as a hospital.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Smokey Bear Historical Park — 4.5 mi
  The small park in Capitan where the living Smokey Bear is buried, a cub found clinging to a burned tree in the Capitan Mountains in 1950, six years after the cartoon was invented.
• Lincoln Historic Site — 8.1 mi
  One street of adobe in the Bonito valley kept much as it was in the 1870s, where the Lincoln County War was fought over who would supply Fort Stanton and the Mescalero agency.

More markers nearby

• Eve Ball (1890-1984) — 2.8 mi
• Capitán — 4.1 mi
• Smokey Bear Historical Park — 4.4 mi
• Capitán — 4.7 mi