Fort Sill National Historic Landmark and Museum

Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan laid out Fort Sill in January 1869, in the museum's words to control the Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne and other southern plains nations. Soldiers of the Tenth Cavalry, the Buffalo Soldiers, with men of the Sixth Infantry, raised the stone buildings around the old post quadrangle in 1869 and 1870. When artillery replaced cavalry, Secretary of War William Howard Taft, who liked the old buildings, had the post grow west and south, so the quadrangle survives. A museum opened here in 1934.

The post's longest captivity began in 1894, when Congress allowed the Chiricahua Apache, held since 1886 in Florida and Alabama, to be moved here. The Fort Sill Apache Tribe says they were promised the post as a permanent home, and they lived in villages around it led by men such as Chihuahua, Loco, Mangus and Noche. In the Tribe's account Geronimo was a medicine man and a leader, but not a chief. By 1910 local politicians, businessmen and Army officers were working to remove them. On April 2, 1913, remembered as the Parting, 180 people left for the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. About 81 who stayed were freed in 1914 onto small allotments near Apache and Fletcher, the Fort Sill Apache Tribe today.

Fort Sill is an active post. Every adult without a Defense Department card needs a pass from the Visitor Welcome Center by Bentley Gate, which runs a background check on Form 118a and requires REAL ID. Request it online a day ahead. The museum is Building 435, Quanah Road.