By Bob Hagan
Coffee on a Cold Morning
There's always something a little sad in seeing an old friend again after the passage of a year or two. You notice the new wrinkles and sagging jowls, the thinning hair and other telltale signs of the constant pull of gravity and implacable march of time.
Fort Bayard is like that for me.
I don't get to Silver City very often, but when I do I always stop by the old fort. It's a quiet and contemplative place - you rarely see another living soul in an hour's stroll around the grounds - and a little eerie. It hasn't been preserved or restored but just left undisturbed, as though all the people had simply gone away unexpectedly and might return at any moment to take up their lives again.
The substantial fourplexes lining what was once Officers' Row were built to the pattern common to army posts all across the 19th century West. It's not hard to imagine portly, dignified men in brass-buttoned blue coats smoking cigars on the verandas while their wives sit fanning themselves in the shade and a sergeant drills a squad of recruits on the parade ground before them. More poignant are the swing sets in the backyards and an ancient teeter-totter half swallowed by weeds, all seeming to echo with the laughter of children long gone.
If there are ghosts they're likely clustered around the modest bronze statue at one end of the old parade commemorating the 13 soldiers awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their bravery in action around Fort Bayard during the 40-year struggle to win the Southwest. Others are buried in the nearby cemetery.
On my latest visit I was dismayed to see the advancing deterioration. The old veterans' hospital is gone now. Architecturally undistinguished, it was no great loss. But the sturdy old buildings along what was Officers' and then Doctors' Row more and more resemble Disney's Haunted Mansion, porches and staircases succumbing to dry rot as large chunks of stucco fall off the walls. The more modest houses behind them, once the homes of nurses and staff, are in even worse shape.
The neighboring Village of Santa Clara has an agreement with the state General Services Administration to fill potholes in the roads, and a handful of volunteers do what they can to keep the grass cut and chop back the weeds. But neither village nor state has the budget to maintain the property.
Fort Bayard was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, but that recognition is no guarantee of government financial support. With 5,000 properties listed, New Mexico has far more history than we can afford.
The state went fishing for a buyer a couple of years ago but got no attractive nibbles. Santa Clara has come up with a new proposal prepared by a consulting firm that participated in the successful San Francisco Presidio project.
As with the Presidio, the plan calls for a hybrid of public and private sector use that could make the old fort financially self-supporting while retaining its historic character. Unfortunately, while there are tax breaks for this kind of investment, state and federal grant money is scarce. And what's worked for a property on the doorstep of a major metropolis isn't a surefire recipe for success in New Mexico.
But a Hail Mary pass could be Fort Bayard's best shot. The only alternative may be to let nature take its course. As Tolkien rhymes it:
This thing all things devours;
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal.
Time catches up with us all in the end.
Contact Bob Hagan at rhagan66@yahoo.com or through www.trackingnana.com