Merrill, Paul

The U.S. Army established Fort Fauntleroy (later Fort Lyon) in what is now McKinley County, N.M., in 1860, and opened Fort Wingate about sixty miles away, near San Rafael, in 1862. Fort Lyon was reestablished as Fort Wingate in 1868. The fort garrisoned soldiers during the Civil War. Until its deactivation in 1911 the duties of the soldiers stationed there primarily included patrols, military surveys and escort functions. In 1914 the fort housed Mexican Federalist troops and their families who had fled the Pancho Villa uprising.

The Army renamed the deactivated fort "Fort Wingate General Ordnance Depot" in 1918, and it served as an ordnance depot until the early 1990s. A school for Native American children opened there in 1925, and a portion of the military reservation was transferred to the Department of the Interior for that purpose.

Among the soldiers associated with the fort were Christopher "Kit" Carson, John "Black Jack" Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, who was born there, and several Navajo Code Talkers.

The Army opened the Fort Wingate Trading Post in 1860 as a canteen and commissary. It closed in 1910 and was reopened as a civilian enterprise in 1920. Paul Merrill bought the business in 1946 and operated it until the early 1990s. The town of Fort Wingate grew up around the fort and trading post and exists today.