Fort Lyon

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This article is about the fort in Colorado. For the Civil War-era fort that defended Washington, D.C., see Fort Lyon (Virginia).

Fort Lyon (also known as Fort Wise) existed on the Colorado eastern plains until 1867, when a new fort was erected near the present-day town of Las Animas, Colorado. The fort was known as Fort Wise until 1862, it had been named after a southern Confederate state's governor, then during the Civil War was renamed for General Nathaniel Lyon, killed in Missouri in 1861. Old Fort Lyon's main claim to fame is that Colonel John Chivington used it as the staging post in 1864 for the Sand Creek Massacre, an attack on Indian tribes that were moving to a new reservation in Oklahoma. The resulting congressional investigation resulted in a national wave of public indignation at the slaughter of elderly men, women, and children, and the dismemberment of the corpses and public display of body parts.

A flood of the Arkansas River in 1866 drove the US Army to establish the location near Las Animas, completed in 1867, and angry indians then burned the remains of the old fort. The U.S. Army abandoned Fort Lyon in 1897. In 1906, the U.S. Navy opened a sanitarium for treating sailors and marines with tuberculosis due to the dry climate and isolation of the fort. On June 22, 1922, the Veteran's Bureau assumed operations. In 1930, administration of the hospital was transferred to the newly created Veterans Administration and within three years the VA designated Fort Lyon a neuropsychiatry facility. In 2001 the hospital was closed and turned over to the state of Colorado for conversion to a minimum security prison. The Fort Lyon National Cemetery, which began burials in 1907, remains open.

[edit] Further Reading

Roe, Frances Marie Antoinette Mack (1909). Army letters from an officer's wife, 1871-1888. D. Appleton. Available online through the Washington State Library's Classics in Washington History collection In 1871, Lieutenant Colonel Fayette Washington Roe (1850-1916) was sent to Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory. His wife, Frances M.A. Roe, describes their experiences while stationed at the fort in this collection of letters.