“Today, not a trace of Fort Fillmore is visible. There is not even a historical marker to commemorate the ill-fated post.”
— Roadside History of New Mexico
The corner of Ft. Fillmore Road and South Main St., Las Cruces (Highway 478) – the only mention or trace of the old fort in the area.
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Johnson’s New Military Map of the United States, a replica of a map printed for the United States War Department in the year 1861, places all the Forts, Military Posts, etc., and shows Ft. Fillmore, Arizona Territory, positioned aside the Rio Grande, just above Ft. Bliss, Texas and below Ft. Thorn, Arizona. My modern-day H.M.Gousha map of New Mexico shows a Point of Interest symbol for the "Ft. Fillmore Ruins" just below Las Cruces between State Road 478 and Interstate 10.
In the 1840s, settlers streamed westward; their need for security along the southern route to California was recognized. Mesilla, a growing economic colony and an important stop on the route to California, needed protection from raiding Apaches.
In Sept. of 1851, the U.S. Government established Ft. Fillmore near Mesilla to insure the security of settlers and travelers to the area.
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La Mesilla, New Mexico, has changed little since Billy the Kid and Jesse Evans died at the end of its lusty frontier atmosphere. Thick-walled adobe buildings erected by the remarkable men who trekked the heels of Don Rafael Rules from the heart of Old Mexico to settle in the spawning Rio Grande Valley are much the same as they were when 10-year-old Mary Maxwell, the daughter of one of La Mesilla’s forthright citizens, was carted off by a hungry mountain lion while gathering wildberries.
Henry Fountain painting of the ceremony at the Gadsden Purchase. Photo courtesy State Historical Society of New Mexico
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The wheels of the Butterfield Stage were slowing. The town had its own laws, and these were solidly enforced. This was a time when its citizens settled their matters with a six-gun rather than wait for a slow-coming court decision.
La Mesilla lies about one mile south of Mesilla Park, on old Highway 80. The macadamized road is aptly marked, and it takes but a few minutes for a visitor to reach this peerless old town with its rows of graves extending far up the hill, a grim reminder of its shadowed history. The sleepy little community with its Old West atmosphere was once considered by Hollywood producer John Ford for a John Wayne movie.
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