National Register Listing

Fort Bayard Historic District

0.5 mi. N of jct. of US 180 and NM 152, Santa Clara, NM

The Fort Bayard Historic District is significant for its role in military history, exploration and settlement, and health and medicine.

During the 99 years spanning its establishment as a fort in 1866 through its closing as a Veterans Administration hospital in 1965, Fort Bayard served as the most prominent evidence of the federal government's role in the development of southwestern New Mexico. From 1866 to 1899 it functioned as an Army post during which period its soldiers, many of them African-American, or Buffalo Soldiers, protected settlers working in nearby mining districts and participated in the final campaigns of the Apache wars. In 1899 the facility became the Army's first tuberculosis sanatorium. Serving in that capacity for 21 years, Fort Bayard, with its high, dry setting, became nationally known for the climatological therapy it provided its patients, as well as its staff's research to develop efficient methods of screening large numbers of individuals for the dreaded disease. It was transferred to the United States Public Health Service in 1920 and then to the Veterans Bureau in 1922 when a modern hospital replaced the multiple ward system of the earlier sanatorium. It continued to serve veterans with pulmonary ailments until 1965 when the federal government closed the hospital, transferring the facility to the State of New Mexico. Although many of the buildings of the first two periods no longer stand, Fort Bayard is significant not only for the role it played as a military post in fostering early settlement in the region, but for its role as a nationally prominent tuberculosis sanatorium and hospital. Its built environment, as described in Section 7, is significant for presenting a well-preserved example of the planning patterns and architectural styles of the building types associated with sanatorium construction during the early decades of the twentieth century, and especially with the post-1922 period, as the emphasis shifted from climatological treatment using dispersed open air wards to the centralized operation of the U.S. Veterans Bureau's sanatorium complex in 1922. The sites are also significant for their historic association with military training and the efforts of the sanatorium to achieve a high degree of self-sufficiency as a part of its mission to restore the health of its tuberculosis patients. For these reasons, the Fort Bayard Historic District is nominated at the state level of significance under Criterion A in the areas of Military, Exploration/Settlement, and Health/Medicine, and under Criterion C, in the area of Architecture.

Local significance of the district:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 2002.