Fort Bayard was established as a
United States Army installation in 1866 to protect miners and other settlers in the area along the
Apache Trail. The fort was named for
Brigadier General George Dashiell Bayard, who was mortally wounded at the
Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. Fifteen square miles of land were set aside as the Fort Bayard Military Reservation by presidential order in 1869. In 1886, then-
Second Lieutenant John Pershing arrived at Fort Bayard and oversaw the installation of a
heliograph, linking the fort to an Army communications network from
Arizona to
Texas. Fort Bayard was one of many installations throughout the Southwest that was garrisoned by the so-called
Buffalo Soldiers. Company B of the
25th United States Colored Infantry Regiment established the post, and they were joined by other black units, including troops from the
9th Cavalry Regiment.
Corporal Clinton Greaves, stationed at Fort Bayard with C Company, 9th Cavalry Regiment, received the
Medal of Honor for his actions against Apache raiders on January 24, 1877. A monument to the Buffalo Soldiers was erected on the old parade field of Fort Bayard in 1992. Following the capture of
Geronimo in 1886, the
Apache were no longer considered a major threat. Fort Bayard's continued usefulness, like that many posts in the southwest, thus came under scrutiny. Due to its distance from the border with
Mexico, the fort was selected for deactivation. However,
U.S. Army Surgeon General George Miller Sternberg, noting the excellent health record of the post, chose Fort Bayard as an Army
tuberculosis hospital and research center (Lectures on tuberculosis made at the fort are archived at the National Library of Medicine). The fort was then transferred to the Surgeon General's department in 1900. In 1919 the Army turned the fort over to the
U.S. Public Health Service to administer Hospital No. 55., a veterans' tuberculosis hospital. In 1922 the hospital became the part of the Veterans Bureau. The fort was partially reactivated as a military installation during
World War II. A number of German prisoners of war were held at the fort from 1943 to 1945. The fort is now administered by the New Mexico Department of Health as Fort Bayard Medical Center, a long-term care nursing facility that also contains a chemical dependency treatment center. Fort Bayard is located north of the intersection of
United States Route 180 and
New Mexico State Road 152, near
Bayard, New Mexico. ==Notable soldiers stationed at Fort Bayard==