Fort Sumner Historic Site/Bosque Redondo Memorial

Against the political and historical backdrop of the American Civil War, a conflict focused mainly in the east, another tragic series of events was unfolding for Native Americans in the western territories of Arizona and New Mexico. From 1863 to 1868, Fort Sumner, New Mexico was the center of a million-acre parcel known as the Bosque Redondo Indian Reservation. The story of how the U.S. Army used scorched earth policies to forcibly remove Navajo and Mescalero Apache people from their traditional homelands to this lonely, inhospitable outpost along the Pecos River is pivotal to the history of the American West.