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Fort Cummings |
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Fort Cummings, located below picturesque CookeÕs Peak, was a walled fort established in October 1863 by the soldiers of the California Column to protect the route known as the Butterfield Trail. With the end of the Civil War in the southwest, the command of the post turned its full attention to the developing Indian Wars. The harsh elements of the desert climate have reduced the old Fort on public land to nothing but adobe ruins. Within the faint outline of the post cemetery walls stands only one stone that commemorates the deaths of four comrades by Apaches. Cooke's Springs, first noted in 1780 by Juan Bautista de Anza and then again by the Mormon Battalion, is still in existence today and originally served the water needs of the Fort and railroad.
The site of Fort Cummings is located on BLM (west of the barbed wire fence) and private ranch lands (east of the fence) approximately 30 miles southwest of Hatch off of Highway 26. For further information call (505) 525-4300.