Page 186 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

mand was joined by the men who had been stationed at Camp Mimbres. This camp near the old stage station had been established in August of the pre- vious year as a depot for Major McCleave’s opera- tions against the Apaches. Now it was to be abandoned and the men and public property, except for the hay, transferred to Fort Cummings?8 Early the following year, 1865, many of the remaining California Volunteer units left, and Fort Cummings and other posts received replacements from either New Mexico Volunteers or reenlisted Californians.
In addition to many unproductive patrols for In- dians throughout much of 1865, as in 1864, construc- tion continued to be a major part of life at Fort Cummings. One of the reasons for the protracted construction was that the fort was built within 10-
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foot-high walls. Soldiers in other forts had ex- perienced Apaches prowling about the military compound at night, and within these posts the men walked around with cocked weapons. For addition- al security, all of Fort Cummings’ windows, even in
3;
The post (Figure 43), must have seemed much like a prison.
The post did have a prison, or at least a guard house. The sally port entrance to the compound was flanked on one side by a stone guardroom and on the other by the lockup also constructed of stone. The only second-story section of the fort was an adobe room constructed over the top of the sally port and
40
these two rooms.
The stone jail for military prisoners failed to keep
them from escaping. On January 16, Privates Matais
o i f—I »—I i—i i—i r~l f
2
U i
172
300 feet l
Figure43. PlanviewofFortCummings.
Fort Cummings: A Guardian of the Road
Scale
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the hospital, faced the parade ground.
1. Sally Pori
2. Prison
3. Guard House
4. Shops
5. Sheds
6. Sheds
7. Store Rooms, offices, &
NCO Quarters
8. Quartermaster’s Corral 9. Store Rooms
10. Quartermaster’s Corral 11. Wood Corral
12. Store Rooms, offices, & Laundresses' Quarters
13. Flag Staff
14. Officers' Quarters 15. Officers’ Quarters 16. Commanding Officer 17. Sink
18. Sink
19. Sink
20. Sink
21. Hospital Unit
22. Ward
23. Laundry
24. Soldiers’ Quarters 25. Soldiers’ Quarters 26. Dining Room
27. Kitchen