Visitors Center at Fort Selden.

One of the photos often seen in World War II literature is of General Douglas MacArthur wading ashore at Leyte in the Phillipines in 1944, honoring his “I Shall Return” promise to help liberate the islands from the Japanese. As a young boy 60 years earlier, the future General of the Army might well have waded barefoot in the muddy Rio Grande River in Southern New Mexico.

On a recent visit to Fort Selden State Monument, I was reminded of the fort’s connection with MacArthur, one of the 20th Century’s best known military figures.

Fort Selden is located about 15 miles north of Las Cruces, up the Rio Grande valley near Radium Springs.

You can get there on Interstate 25, but it’s a more leisurely drive up Highway 1-85, which follows the course of the Rio Grande northward.

Remnants of the fort’s adobe walls remain, and there’s a modern visitor center with a museum housing interesting exhibits depicting life in the U.S.Army of the late 1800’s. Visitors may view a short video telling the history of the fort, if they wish, before taking a self-guided walking tour of the grounds.

Fort Selden was one of a series of frontier outposts established by the government after the Civil War to protect western settlers from the Indians and from outlaws. The fort was built in 1865 and occupied off and on until it was finally abandoned in 1891. In 1884, career officer Captain Arthur MacArthur was assigned to Fort Selden as Commanding Officer. He brought with him his wife and two young sons, one of whom was the young future general Douglas.

The Indian threat in the region was winding down. The following year, however, Apache chief Geronimo and his band escaped from the reservation in Arizona and began raiding along the borders of Mexico, Arizona, and Southern New Mexico.  

Ruins at Ft. Selden

Walking among the stone foundations and adobe ruins of the fort, I could imagine young Douglas MacArthur and his friends running and hiding between the buildings, playing at Cavalry and Indians, their imaginations sparked by the latest army post scuttlebutt about the whereabouts of Geronimo. In 1886, a year after their escape, however, Geronimo’s band surrendered, and life at Fort Selden probably settled back into its normal dusty army post routine, especially unexciting for boys on the lookout for Apaches.

Fort Selden was laid out like many military posts, buildings arranged in a rectangle with a drill field in the center. The MacArthur residence quarters faced out onto the drill field, and are marked today by a sign. As a boy, MacArthur probably watched out the windows of that adobe apartment as the daily military rituals of reveille, forming the troops, and evening retreat took place. In later years, Douglas MacArthur would march the drill fields at West Point, first as a cadet, and later as Superintendant of the academy. Perhaps the seeds of his devotion to “Duty, honor, country . . . ” were first planted here at Fort Selden.

The MacArthur family left Fort Selden toward the end of 1886, moving on to a new assignment. Douglas later went to a military academy in Texas, then to West Point, and on to a long distinguished military career, ultimately achieving the rank of five-star General. He served in both World Wars and the Korean conflict. MacArthur was one of those characters in history whose lifetime bridged two eras, from the final years of the Indian conflicts on the western frontier to the beginning of the Atomic age at the end of WWII.

Military history buffs will especially enjoy a visit to Fort Selden. There are no camping facilities there, but it’s just a short drive up the road to Leasburg Dam State Park, which has some nice scenic campsites and RV facilities. It’s an interesting and peaceful spot to spend a day or a weekend, watching the sun set over the mountains and imagining what it must have been like here in those earlier times.