Fort Wingate: Tribal Park or National Monument?

Above, the area of Fort Wingate the task force wants to preserve. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

There is a 500 "patch of land" near Fort Wingate that the Old Fort Wingate Task Force wants to transfer from the control of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the National Park Service. It is then hoped that once the transfer is complete, the task force hopes to work with the NPS to establish the 500 acres as a tribal park or as a national monument.

Above, task force president Martin
Link. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Heading the Old Fort Wingate Task Force is its president, Martin Link. Link, as many readers of this blog knows, is a local Gallup, New Mexico historian and writer and it is at his residence in Gallup that I attend monthly dinners.

Several of Fort Wingate's buildings have been saved from near-demolition under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, despite several of them are on the National Register of Historic Places.

John Taylor, secretary for the task force, says the ultimate goal is to preserve the fort as a depiction of living history. The land will be either transferred to the Navajo Nation as a tribal park or to the National Park Service as a national monument.

The proposed tribal park or national monument would not involve the land of the Army Depot section of Fort Wingate which contains the ordnance storage bunkers.

Above, the entrance to the Army depot section of Fort Wingate. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Martin Link hinted at last month's dinner that things were beginning to happen with Fort Wingate. The biggest issue standing in the way is funding.

Source: Gallup Sun.