How do you protect the Santa Fe Trail and the settlers, miners, ranchers and traders? You build a fort. Fort Union actually. The Santa Fe Trail goes through, not just near, the fort’s grounds. The fort, don’t think stockade but lots of buildings and corrals spread over a lot of acreage. Actually there was an earthen fort here first but it was never engaged and gradually it is disappearing. The second fort is what you get to explore. There are a lot of partial buildings and walls. Any of the bricks you see interspersed with the adobe were brought from the east by wagon. The fort had a wagon repair shop, a hospital, church, horses and oxen that could be exchanged or purchased but the primary buildings here were warehouses that supplies were collected and then distributed to several other forts from Fort Union.
These two men from England on the Santa Fe Trail, one of their goals for their trip to the “wild west.”
Looking through several warehouse walls in the harsh afternoon sun.
Contract workers for about 5 months of the year apply fresh “mud” from a nearby pit, mixed with water and some clay and applied by hand with thick rubber gloves over thinning adobe coverage.