45th legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - first session, 2001

REQUESTING THAT FORT BAYARD BE DESIGNATED A STATE MONUMENT.

WHEREAS, Fort Bayard began in 1866 as an encampment of Company B of the 125th United States colored infantry; and

WHEREAS, many buffalo soldiers were stationed at Fort Bayard throughout the late 1800s; and

WHEREAS, Fort Bayard was named in honor of General George D. Bayard, who had served as a lieutenant in the New Mexico and Arizona territories and died at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, in 1862; and

WHEREAS, Corporal Clinton Greaves, a man born into slavery, became the first buffalo soldier stationed at Fort Bayard to receive the congressional medal of honor; and

WHEREAS, Fort Bayard served as a United States army general hospital for the treatment and research of tuberculosis, caring for one thousand seven hundred patients during World War I; and

WHEREAS, Fort Bayard was under the jurisdiction of the veterans' administration from 1922 to 1966, when it was turned over to the state as a public nursing home; and

WHEREAS, Fort Bayard's post cemetery was designated as a national cemetery in 1976, and Fort Bayard's buffalo soldier memorial was dedicated in 1992;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that Fort Bayard be designated a state monument as a recognition of its importance in the history of the state; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the cultural properties review committee and the board of regents of the museum of New Mexico for consideration of Fort Bayard as a state monument.