Fort Sumner Fort Sumner was a military fort in De Baca County in southeastern New Mexico charged with the internment of Navajo and Mescalero Apache populations from 1863 - 1868 at nearby Bosque Redondo . History . On October 31 , 1862 , Congress authorized the creation of Fort Sumner . General James Henry Carleton initially justified the fort as offering protection to settlers in the Pecos River valley from the Mescalero Apache s , Kiowa , and Comanche . He also created the Bosque Redondo reservation , a area where over 9 , 000 Navajo and Mescalero Apaches were forced to live because of accusations raiding white settlements near their respective homelands . The fort was named for General Edmond Vose Sumner . The stated purpose of the reservation was for it to be self - sufficient , while teaching Mescalero Apaches and Navajos how to be modern farmers . General Edward Canby , whom Carleton replaced , first suggested that the Navajo people be moved to a series of reservations and be taught new skills . Some in Washington , D . C . thought that the Navajos did not need to be moved and a reservation should be created on their land . Some New Mexico citizens encouraged death or at least complete removal of the Navajo off their lands . The 1865 and 1866 corn production was sufficient , but in 1867 it was a total failure . Army officers and Indian Agents realized that the Bosque Redondo was a failure , offering poor water and too little firewood for the numbers of people who were there . The Mescaleros soon ran away ; the Navajos stayed longer , but in May 1868 were permitted to return to Navajo lands . Gen . Carleton ordered Col . Christopher " Kit " Carson to do whatever necessary to bring first the Mescaleros and then the Navajos to the Bosque Redondo . All of the Mescalero Apache were there by the end of 1862 , but the Navajo did not get there in large numbers until early 1864 . The Navajos refer to the journey from Navajo land to the Bosque Redondo as the Long Walk . Over 300 Navajos died making the journey . While a bitter memory to many Navajo , one who was there reports as follows : “ By slow stages we traveled eastward by present Gallup and Shushbito , Bear spring , which is now called Fort Wingate . You ask how they treated us ? If there was room the soldiers put the women and children on the wagons . Some even let them ride behind them on their horses . I have never been able to understand a people who killed you one day and on the next played with your children . . . ? " There were about 8 , 500 Navajo and 500 Mescalero Apaches interned at Bosque Redondo in April 1865 . The Army had only anticipated 5 , 000 would be there , so food was an issue from the start . The Navajo and Mescalero Apache had long been enemies and now that they were in forced proximity to each other , fighting often broke out . The environmental situation got worse . The interned people had no clean water , it was full of alkali and there was no firewood to cook with . The water from the nearby Pecos River caused severe intestinal problems and disease quickly spread throughout the camp . Food was also in short supply because of crop failures , Army and Indian Agent bungling , and criminal activities . In 1865 , the Mescalero Apaches , or those strong enough to travel , managed to escape . The Navajo were not allowed to leave until May , 1868 when it was agreed by the U . S . Army that Fort Sumner and the Bosque Redondo reservation was a failure . A treaty was negotiated with the Navajos and they were allowed to return to their homeland , to a " new reservation . " There they were joined by the thousands of Navajo who had been hiding out in the Arizona hinterlands . This experience resulted in a more determined Navajo , and never again were they surprise raiders of the Rio Grande valley . In subsequent years they have expanded the " new reservation " into well over 16 million acres ( 65 , 000 km² ) . Fort Sumner was abandoned in 1869 and purchased by rancher and cattle baron Lucien Maxwell . Maxwell rebuilt one of the officers ' quarters into a 20 - room house . On July 14 , 1881 , Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed Billy the Kid in this house , now referred to as the Maxwell House . Fort Sumner Historic Site . In 1968 — one hundred years after the signing of the treaty that allowed the Navajo people to return to their original homes in the Four Corners Region — Fort Sumner was declared a New Mexico State Monument . The property is now managed by the New Mexico Historic Sites ( formerly State Monuments ) division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs . On June 4 , 2005 , a new museum designed by Navajo architect David N . Sloan was opened on the site as the Bosque Redondo Memorial . The Bosque Redondo Memorial and Fort Sumner Historic Site are located southeast of Fort Sumner , New Mexico : east on U . S . Route 60 / U . S . Route 84 , then south on Billy The Kid Road