Fort Wingate: Final resting place
Veterans find Fort Wingate a prime cemetery location

ABOVE: Ft. Wingate Army Depot archway Tuesday, September 16. — © 2008 Gallup Independent / Cable Hoover BELOW: The Fort Wingate Historical Cemetery is hard to find and hard to get to. It is on BIA Administrative land, which is land not being held for tribes and still belonging to the government. — © 2008 Gallup Independent / Gaye Brown de Alvarez

Mexican Army General Cazetano Romero is buried at the Fort Wingate Historical Cemetery, and his gravesite is the only one with any kind of adornment. He may have died from dysentery, as many Mexican soldiers did when they were contained as prisoners at the fort. — © 2008 Gallup Independent / Gaye Brown de Alvarez

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Gaye Brown de Alvarez
Staff writer

Fort Wingate Timeline
— PDF—

GALLUP — When Fort Wingate Depot was declared inactive in 1993, nobody quite knew what to do with it.
In 1918, the Army established a munitions depot around an old cavalry post. From 1918 until its closure in 1993, the 22,000-acre installation stored and demolished ammunition. In negotiations with the tribes, the Army Base Realignment and Closure Program transferred half of the 22,000 acres to be used jointly by the tribes, retaining the other half for missile testing and launching.

In 1970, the land was determined by the U.S. Indian Claims Commission to be aboriginal Navajo lands. Then in 1989 a U.S. Claims Court determined that Fort Wingate was in part, also Zuni aboriginal lands. But the Zuni land has not been officially staked and talks are ongoing between the two tribes.

But still, after decades, no unauthorized people are allowed on the land, and the 150 ammunition bunkers are not completely empty. Also, some of the land still belongs to the Missile Defense Agency who occasionally shoots off test missiles to White Sands Missile Range.

So in 2008, still nobody knows what to do.

But Gallup resident Mike Perez has an answer.

Perez, who is a Vietnam veteran, thinks a small portion of the Fort Wingate Depot land should be made into a veterans cemetery. A veterans cemetery that would be available for Navajo, Zuni, Anglo, Hispanic and anybody else who served in military service for the U.S.

One of his concerns is the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II. “They’re buried here and there, and they should all be buried together,” Perez said. “Everybody I’ve talked to thinks it is a good idea, but nobody has done anything.”

The Pueblo of Zuni has a Fort Wingate Project coordinator who said it is a 20-year cleanup that has only been worked on for two years. It will take years for all the ammunition and chemicals to be removed from the land.

Edward Wemytewa said in a telephone interview that Defense Base Closure and Re-alignment Commission had subcontractors and the cleanup of munitions was “technical.” The soil is contaminated with things like left-over fuses and leakage of dynamite. He also said that none of the land was given to the Pueblo of Zuni, and that decision is being appealed.

Cemetery sites

Richard K. Begay of the Navajo Veterans Affairs said that his department asked Navajo Nation chapters to identify sites that could be used as a veteran cemetery. The Churchrock and Crownpoint Chapters suggested an expansion of the present veterans cemetery near the school. But, Begay said they asked to get on the school board agenda for a meeting and have not heard back.

Chinle passed a resolution to use 40 acres south of the intersection of U.S. 191 and Navajo 7 about four or five miles near a mesa outcrop which used to be a rifle range.

But to obtain federal funds and assistance, the cemetery has to have infrastructure, Begay said. That includes lights and water. So the resolution is still ongoing.

Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said “America owes its veterans a debt of gratitude that we can never fully repay. I have worked hard to ensure that veterans — including Native American veterans who have too often been left behind — have access to appropriate cemetery space. I will continue working with my colleagues and my constituents to ensure that every veteran receives a burial that honors their service.”

During the last Congress, Udall introduced and got passed legislation that gave tribes access to veterans cemetery funds. Before that, many Native American vets who wanted to be buried in compliance with Native American traditions were effectively denied the burial benefits they had earned through their service, he said in an e-mail Monday.

Gallup Mayor Harry Mendoza said he thought portioning out a small part of the 22,000 acres of Fort Wingate for a veterans cemetery was a great idea. He said he had already talked to Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley and Vice President Shelly about using front parcels for economic development.

“Definitely I think that would be a great place for a veterans cemetery,” he said. “And I would be glad and honored to help get this thing going.”

But, Mendoza added, there was years worth of contamination cleanup that still needed to be completed. The first step in the veterans cemetery process, would be to get the permission from whoever owned the land.
The property owner is the Navajo Nation.

Sharlene Begay-Platero, the Navajo Nation coordinator on the Fort Wingate MOU since 1997, said the contamination cleanup was supposed to be done in 2012, and in a master plan completed years ago, a veterans cemetery for members of the Navajo tribe in Parcel 15 was mentioned. Nothing was mentioned about veterans as a whole, just Navajo veterans.

Parcel 15 is the corner of I-40 and Highway 400 and the most prime real estate on Fort Wingate. Parcel 17 is the flat land to the south of where the high school students placed WHS painted rocks on the rocky ledge, another good space for a cemetery, but very viable real estate, Begay-Platero pointed out during a trip to Fort Wingate.

History

In 1846 the Treaty of Bear Springs was signed by Narbona, Zarcillas Largo, Sandoval and other Navajo Chiefs and Colonel Alexander Domphor of Third Missouri Volunteeers of the U.S. Army. In the spring of 1860 a temporary post, Fort Fauntleroy, was established at Bear Spring. Later it was renamed Fort Lyon when General Thomas T. Faunleroy, for whom the Fort was originally named, joined the Confederates. The post was abandoned at the time of the Texan invasion of the territory in 1862. By 1868 the post was reoccupied by troops accompanying the Navajo Indians when they were moved from the Reservation of Fort Sherman, New Mexico. The post was renamed Fort Wingate after the abandonment of an army post of that name located near the present site of San Rafael, New Mexico. It served as the Agency for the Navajos returning from Fort Sumner for a short time until the Agency was moved to Fort Defiance.

Between 1910 and 1914 the post was abandoned and placed in charge of a caretaker. The buildings were temporarily used for housing 4000 Mexicans during the Villa Uprising in 1914, and General John J. Pershing used Fort Wingate as a rest post during the Villa Uprising. Between 1915 and 1918 the Post was abandoned and placed in charge of a caretaker. In 1918 the facility was taken over by the Ordnance Department for the storage of high explosive.

Fort Wingate contains sites rich in cultural heritage and historical significance. Over 200 Navajo ruins were discovered on the property, as well as several modern earth-covered dwellings called “hogans.” The property served for centuries as a hunting and gathering area for the Zunis. Over 600 archeological sites were recorded by surveyors, including an additional 200 ruins traceable to the Anasazi, ancestors of the Zuni.

Located just off Interstate 40 approximately 15 miles east of Gallup, Fort Wingate is part of the Eastern Navajo Agency of the Navajo Nation. The land in and around Fort Wingate is mostly privately held or owned by the U.S. government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs-run boarding school of Fort Wingate provides room for the Fort Wingate Clinic.

Historical Cemetery

Begay-Platero said there was already the cemetery in Fort Wingate where members of the cavalry and the Buffalo soldiers were buried. That is BIA Administrative land, she said. Land that has not been held in trust for any tribe, she explained.

It’s hard to find, but the cemetery is the Fort Wingate Historical Cemetery, established in 1860, before the railroad, after the Mexican-American war. Mexican soldiers were held in containment in Fort Wingate and according to Scott Merrill, whose family has owned land in Fort Wingate for decades, many of the soldiers, their wives and children, contracted dysentery and died. Their graves are marked at the cemetery along with the soldiers who died, and a Mexican Army Gen. Cazetano Romero.

Some of the marble plaques say “Unknown” or “Child.”
Many of the graves are not marked with names, but only wooden crosses, which are in a state of disrepair. But with no road to the cemetery and barely even a sheep’s path, restoration would be difficult.