bosque redondo memorial

There are some interesting items but, the museum is far from finished. Most of the displays are scheduled for the future.

Visit to Bosque Redondo is informative and heartbreaking as you see the misery and pain the Navajo faced in there journey to Bosque Redondo as well as the painful life they were faced to deal with after their journey. The Staff are amazingly knowledgeable a take their time to allow you to learn and enjoy your visit. Many Navajo still go there to pay homage to their ancestors. An area within the trail has a memorial built from a mound of stones and prayers, touching was the purple heart left on the mound by a Navajo American Soldier. Although he requested the staff not to divulge his name, his act was that of a true Navajo expressing his pride and grief. God Bless Him.

My family visited the memorial during Labor Day weekend, 2014. We happened to visit on a Sunday which is free for New Mexico residents. The staff were absolutely accommodating and gave me a free $10 booklet featuring the many written exhibits since I was a teacher in New Mexico. We spent about two hours here, reading the exhibits and walking outside with the free headsets to walk around the actual fort area and listen to the entire experience. The headsets pointed out the exact location of several sites to include such things as the officers' quarters, the sutler's store, the parade ground, and most other buildings that had been previously housed here.The grounds also offer a lovely nature trail that takes you down to the Pecos River--this is the actual area in which the Navajo and Mescalero Apache lived in their natural housing styles. There are no ruins of the fort or Native American housing that still stands today. This memorial is absolutely on-point for their thorough coverage of the Mescalero Apache and Navajo internment here from 1863-1868. It covers all the historical data from the time of arrival of these Indian POW's to the time when they were freed. In the case of the Mescalero Apache, they escaped. More than 3,000 Native Americans died here from both starvation and rampant diseases. There are many pictures of the time also.Also, Billy the Kid's actual place of death is located on this outdoor walk since he was gunned down by Pat Garrett here. Billy had been staying with his friend, Peter Maxwell, at Maxwell's home (an officer's quarters building turned into a civilian residence). There is a grave marker at this point in the outdoor tour. No part of this house remains standing.Lastly, in my mind, the most amazing sight is that of the Navajo rock collection which shows the Navajo people's remembrance of this time of suffering. Navajos have brought rocks and other holy pieces of memorabilia from their original homelands to honor their dead ancestors. The park ranger pointed out this pile of rocks and shared this experience with us. Back in 2005?, a Navajo gentleman and his mother came in to explore the monument. When he arrived, he asked her for a piece of string. She was able to locate one and gave it to him. Upon returning from the outdoor experience, he told her that he had just returned from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and had been wounded twice. He had received a purple heart and had decided to leave it hanging on a stick in the rock pile to honor his Navajo ancestors. He required only one thing from her--never to mention his name. To this day, she never has. The purple heart is still hanging there . . . . don't miss it.The most ironic piece of information I read while visiting: At the time of the Civil War, when African-Americans were being freed from slavery, the Native American Mescalero Apaches and Navajos were being imprisoned and being treated as less than human . . . . In essence, this visit is very informative--take your time and learn.

Very friendly and knowledgeable staff (Amanda and Grace), great video of the history of the area. Memorial is relatively new and is still working on putting displays and information together. It is a great place to visit and will only get better with time!

It is a small park with plenty to do. Fishing, picnicing, camping, wildlife watching, and hiking are great things to do here. This is a hidden oasis in this area.

Visitors should wait a few years to see this "exhibit." It is so new you can still smell the paint but most of the "exhibit" shows pictures of artists renderings of the exhibits that have yet to be installed or completed. They shouldn't ask for any money to see this non-exhibit until it has more to see, but there is an entrance fee. It would be poetic justice to hand them an artists rendering of what a $5 bill will look like once they have something worth showing. Don't waste your time or money yet. Wait until you read that they have more on display than just artists renderings of what it will look like in the future.Also, earlier in my trip, I read that Kit Carson was ordered to move the Apache and Navajo to Fort Sumner. I asked the park ranger about this and he said that Kit Carson had nothing to do with it. But inside the museum there are several references to Kit Carson. That park ranger needs to do his homework so he can provide better answers than the one he gave us.

This is a wonderful place to visit to learn about a part of New Mexico history that is not well known to a lot of us older people that grew up here in New Mexico. The building is fantastic, the people that work there are very knowledgeable and friendly, and the information on the events that took place so many years ago is just unbelievable. They are still adding to the exhibits, but what is there is incredible. We had no idea about this part of history. There is a lot of reading that you must do on the walls, so it may not be the best place for smaller kids, but we enjoyed what we learned.

This memorial is just being put together and doesn't have a lot of stuff on display. It does have some interesting information on the walls and the film you can watch was very moving. But it's still a work in progress.

Just visiting the site is a great experience and if the State of New Mexico will help fund the site, it will be outstanding when completed. The building is beautiful, but lacking in displays because of the current economicwoes. The visitor who has a littke knowledge of this tragic Navajo experiment as well as a knowledge of Fort Sumner, Lucien Maxwll and Billy the Kid wil enjoy visiting the sites o f these places and persons. Maxwell's and The Kid's graves are just up the road. The ranger on duty was most helpful. This is astory that should be told and has the importance for the Navajothatthe Trail of Tears for Choctaws and Cherokees.

This was a very emotional visit for me. I live and work on the Navajo Nation. I was in Clovis, New Mexico, for a conference. the last time I was by Fort Sumner, the visitor's center was not yet complete. I planned to spend about 30 minutes there. I ended up spending about three hours.The Navajo people, along with the Mescaleros, were taken prisoner and held in what can only be described as a concentration camp at Fort Sumner in 1863. It became known to the Navajo as The Long Walk. After devastating results (around 3,0000 Navajos died during their captivity) the Navajo were allowed to leave via the Treaty of 1868 and the Fort closed shortly thereafter.The Monument does a good job of trying to tell the story. Most of the old buildings are gone, some washed away by the changing course of the Pecos River. They are still trying to complete the visitor's center and add more exhibits. For me, it was heartbreaking to think of all the happened there. If you have any interest at all in Native American history, this place is a must see if you are in this area. It does not have the "WOW" factor of many sites, but that is not what it is designed for. It tells the story of a proud people and a failed policy of the government handling of the Native people. I have promised myself that I will come again to Bosque Redondo someday with my family. I will never forget what happened here.

I didn't know much about the forced removal of Navajo and Apache to Bosque Redondo before visiting, but this is the kind of history everyone should learn. The memorial, still under construction, is a beautiful tribute to the trials endured by thousands of Native Americans. Also on the grounds is the spot where Billy the Kid was shot, although the home is long gone.

Layout and highlights of Red Indian history and culture.

My wife grew up in New Mexico near the Mescalero Apache Reservation (near Cloudcroft, NM) and thought she knew about them. There is much more than she heard in school. The area of the present reservation was originally their homelands, but as Americans came into the area before the Civil War the Indians resisted. In 1863, the U.S. government sent them on a "Long Walk" from their mountainous home to this desolate, flat, barren area and kept them there until 1868. Its a tragic story, but not one that should be forgotten. The state has built an impressive new museum loaded with pictures on the site of the original Ft. Sumner. Its worth going south from IH 40 to see.