Fort Wingate, New Mexico
Fort in McKinley County · Not an incorporated municipality
About Fort Wingate
Fort Wingate was a military installation near Gallup, New Mexico, United States. There were two other locations in New Mexico called Fort Wingate: Seboyeta (1849–1862) and San Rafael (1862–1868). The most recent Fort Wingate (1868–1993) was established at the former site of Fort Lyon, on Navajo territory, initially to control and "protect" the large Navajo tribe to its north. The fort at San Rafael was the staging point for the Navajo deportation known as the Long Walk of the Navajo. From 1870 onward the garrison near Gallup was concerned with Apaches to the south, and through 1890 hundreds of Navajo Scouts were enlisted at the fort.
Fort Wingate supplied 100 tons of Composition B high explosives to the Manhattan Project for use in the first Trinity test and became an ammunition depot "Fort Wingate Depot Activity" from World War II until it was closed by the 1993 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Environmental cleanup of UXO, perchlorate, and lead as well as land transfer continue to the present day.
The Fort Wingate Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. The associated community was first listed as the Fort Wingate census-designated place in 2020, with a population of 328 during the 2020 census.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
How Fort Wingate is governed
Fort Wingate appears to be an unincorporated community or a census-designated place, so it may have no city government of its own — services usually come from McKinley County and its elected officials. The chart below is a generic template; readers can correct it if Fort Wingate does have local officials.
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Residents of Fort Wingate
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History
Ojo del Oso (in Spanish meaning "Eye of the Bear" or "Bear Spring") was a Navajo place visited for good grazing and water.
19th century
1849: A hay camp was set up near Seboyeta, New Mexico and was called Fort Wingate. It was named for Major Benjamin Wingate, 5th U.S. Infantry, who died on 1 June 1862 from wounds he received during the Battle of Valverde.
1860: Fort Fauntleroy was established at Bear Springs (Ojo del Oso) as an outpost of Fort Defiance. Colonel Thomas T. Fauntleroy named the fort for himself.
1861: Fort Fauntleroy was renamed Fort Lyon for Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon, a Unionist, when Fauntleroy left New Mexico to join the Provisional Army of Virginia after the state seceded from the Union. Fort Lyon was closed on 10 September 1861 at the start of the Civil War.
1862: Fort Wingate was moved near a large spring at San Rafael, New Mexico, also known as "Bikyaya" or "El Gallo" (the rooster). It was designed to house four companies of troops.
1864: Edward Canby ordered Colonel Kit Carson to bring four companies of the First New Mexico Volunteers to the fort to "control" the Navajo.
1864–1866: It was the staging point for the Navajo deportation known as the Long Walk of the Navajo.
1865: The New Mexico Military District had 3,089 troops, 135 of them at Fort Wingate.
1868: Fort Wingate was moved back to the former site of Fort Lyon at Ojo del Oso.
1868: Navajo people returning from Bosque Redondo were temporarily settled at the Oso Del Ojo Fort Wingate before spreading out into the newly established Navajo Reservation.
1873–1886: The fort's troops participated in Apache Wars with troops and recruited Navajo Scouts.
1878: Fort Wingate had 137 troops.
1868–1895: Fort Wingate troops often settled disagreements between Navajo and "citizens" in New Mexico.
1891: Fort Wingate troops assisted Arizona units against angry Hopis.
20th century
1907: Two troops of the 5th Cavalry went from Fort Wingate to the Four Corners area after some armed Navajo. This was the last armed expedition the US Government made against the Navajo. One Navajo was killed and the rest escaped.
1911: A Ft. Wingate company of cavalry went to Chaco Canyon and camped there several days to quell a possible uprising by Navajo.
1914: During the Mexican Civil War over 2,000 Mexican soldiers and their families took refuge at the fort.
1918: Fort Wingate focus turned from Navajo to World War I.
1940: Fort Wingate became an ammunition depot from World War II until 1993.
1944: Fort Wingate supplied 100 tons of Composition B high explosives to the Manhattan Project for use in the first Trinity test.
1950: Bureau of Indian Affairs was given part of the polluted land for an Indian boarding school.
1960–67: Redstone and Pershing 1 missiles were tested among others at Wingate.
1971: DoD Placed Fort Wingate on reserve and re-designated as "Fort Wingate Depot Activity" or FWDA.
1988: the Base Realignment and Closure round 1 decided to close the Fort.
Environmental restoration activities at FWDA began in 1989.
January 1993: the Base Realignment and Closure Act (BRAC) closed the post.
21st century
Though the fort's mission ended, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) continues to use 6,465 acres for launching target rockets to White Sands Missile Range (WSMR).
In December 2005, the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) issued the Army a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Permit.
As of 2016, FWDA spread across 21,131 acres, occupied 15,280 acres of land and a BRAC acreage of 14,666.
Environmental cleanup and land transfer to the surrounding community continues to the present, through at least 2022. 5,854 acres have already been transferred to the Department of Interior. Explosives, perchlorates and nitrates are the primary contaminant in the northern groundwater plumes which have not migrated off-post, all other sites consist of relatively minor soil or building contamination without groundwater issues but with explosives, SVOCs, and metals like lead.
On July 25, 2026, according to McKinley County Fire Rescue, a lightning strike caused a fire that completely destroyed the barracks that had been converted in 1956 to dormitories for the Charles A. Burke Indian School, a boarding school where at least 18 Indigenous children had died according to a 2024 Department of Interior report.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.