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.

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The author’s son, on a 1998 trip to Big Rock. Photo by Gary Smith

I think Big Rock is on Gilita Creek, though I’ve never really looked at a map, maybe five miles or so downstream from the Gilita campgrounds. The trail always appears to be well beaten, but we’ve never seen anyone else on it. Seasoned hikers would probably consider it an easy stroll, but for city folks unaccustomed to carrying 20 or 30 pounds on our backs, it’s challenging. You wind your way along the stream, frequently wading to follow the trail markers carved into trees along the path. The scenery is beautiful, the mountain air cool and fragrant, and the only sounds are the birds and the rattlings and squeakings of our backpacks. Finally, you wade the stream for about the hundredth time, climb up the bank and find yourself in a clearing circled by great old trees. Then you see the Big Rock, standing almost like one of those giant stone faces on Easter Island.

We’re not the kind of purist backpackers who camp only to rest up for the next day’s hike. We prefer to pack in a few days’ worth of supplies, find a nice spot, and stay there. We usually spend 3 or 4 nights at the rock, since that’s about all the food we can comfortably carry . Days we spend wandering up and down the stream, fishing for our supper, exploring . . . or reading paperbacks beneath the circle of trees, smelling the warm pine smell, listening to the chuckle of the stream. Nights we sit and watch the fire cast dancing shadows on the trees around the rock. My son was 6 years old the first time he watched those shadows, probably a little afraid of what might be watching him back from outside the circle of light. On our last trip he was almost 30, standing nearly a foot taller than his old man, now able to carry more than his share of the load.

The big rock makes a natural chimney, evidenced by its blackened face, charred from the smoke of a thousand campfires. We’ve cooked many a skillet of freshly caught trout there, though some years we’ve had to rely more on noodles, jerky or other portable meals when the fish either weren’t there or didn’t cooperate.

A lot has happened in the world over the years we’ve been going to the rock. Wars have been fought and forgotten; politics have waxed and waned; new technologies have been invented, some already obsolete.

In our own families there have been births, deaths, marriages, divorces . . . beginnings and endings.

At home in the city we’ve grown numb to constant change and relentless progress. We’re accustomed to seeing familiar places disappear under yet another shopping mall or freeway.

But back at Big Rock, a year, or two, or five, passes with barely a change visible. Oh, surely the trees have grown a little, the rock is a little blacker, the stream a little higher or lower. But, reassuringly, there’s always that moment when you’ve made the long trip once again, when you wade the stream that one last time, step into the clearing and see the Big Rock . . . yes, it’s still here; everything looks the same.

I worried last year that maybe we were getting too old to make the trip, that our 50-something year-old legs might protest at taking us so far away from the comforts of home. But, we made it fine, the only casualty being a foot I twisted jumping backwards when a mountain rattler buzzed his warning beside the trail. It only occasionally still hurts a little.

I need a place like Big Rock, a place I can go and be reminded that the real world goes on whether we are here or not, and that the most transient things in our lives are those things man has made. In troubled times I‘ve found great comfort in imagining the Big Rock in its clearing: silent, just there, through the seasons, through the years. Even when my body won’t take me, my spirit will always carry me back to Big Rock.

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