“I do remember my second visit to Fort Union. It came when I was a ninth grader, on a school-sponsored winter camping trip around northern New Mexico, sharing a pup tent with my friend Linda. I delighted in its silence and mystery, with the wind sighing through the tall grass, the lone chimneys of the officers’ quarters glowing in the sun. I felt a quiet, powerful thrill as I gazed at the Santa Fe Trail, its wide swales pressed into the earth by 60 years of wagons and hooves. The atmosphere whetted my keen appetite for history, for the people who made it, and for the places where it happened. Fort Union became another signpost guiding me to study the past. What a gift.”
~Julie Campbell~
Thanks so much for commenting on my photo of the Fort Union National Monument. One of the duties of the soldiers there in the 19th century was to guard the wagon trains along the Santa Fe Trail. There are still visible ruts in the earth where the trail used to be.