Fort Selden
It was a beautiful, sunny, warm day today, so I got out and went just down the street to an old historic Army fort named Fort Selden. There's not much left of the Fort, but I like historic places like that, and it gave me the opportunity to walk around an interesting place for a few hours and take some snapshots.
I know when and where I'll be going when I leave Leesburg Dam State Park. For me, that's not a normal thing, but because some state parks in New Mexico don't have first-come, first-serve sites, I have to actually make a reservation for some places I want to be. In this case, I'll leave Friday morning and go to Rockhound State Park near Deming, New Mexico, for four days.
It's only about 80 miles from Leasburg Dam State Park, and I've got to drive past a Walmart on the way there, which is good since I need some supplies. If you recall, I have talked before about how I don't have much extra space in the Lance for storing food, or anything else for that matter, so I have to shop more often nowadays. There's not much I miss about living in the Arctic Fox but having a refrigerator the size of a home refrigerator, plenty of space to store stuff, and the Arctic Fox having lots of carry weight is sorely missed when I come out of Walmart with my grocery cart loaded with more things than the Lance camper can carry.
I looked on the Internet today to see if I could find anything new about New Mexico's state parks’ changing fee schedule, and I couldn't find anything current. The fees are supposed to change on 1 January, and here it is almost the middle of December, and we still haven't been told what changes will occur. It's almost as if the New Mexico government is trying to get as little attention as possible about the price increases by waiting until Christmas to talk about it, knowing that people will be busy then and not paying attention.
theboondork
Old Fort Selden is nothing more than a few scraps of slowly dissolving Adobe walls. I believe it's claim to fame is World War II Gen. Douglas MacArthur's father, oddly named Arthur MacArthur, was an officer here at this Fort and Gen. Douglas MacArthur lived here as a young boy for a few years.
An odd military fact is that only two fathers and sons have won the Medal of Honor: Lieut. Arthur MacArthur and his son, Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The other two were Teddy Roosevelt and his father.
Fort Selden in the 1800s. A few soldiers are standing on the parade ground. The mountain in the background is the same as the mountain in the picture above that I took.
All the buildings in the fort were made of adobe except this one, which was made of stone. This was the stockade, and is made of stone because it was too easy to dig your way out of adobe.
1800s picture of Fort Selden and the adobe buildings.
The parade grounds at Fort Selden with some Canons and their limbers sitting around