The Bosque Redondo Memorial at Fort Sumner – September 21st, 2019

The Bosque Redondo Memorial at Fort Sumner State Monument solemnly remembers the dark days of suffering from the 1863 to1868 when the U.S. Military persecuted and imprisoned 9,500 Navajo (the Dine) and 500 Mescalero Apache (the N’ de) on a reservation known as Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The area that encompassed 1,600 square miles over one million acres.

The Bosque Redondo Memorial celebrates these two cultures’ dignity, resilience, endurance, courage, and strength, in the face of extreme hardship, isolation, sickness and death, to emerge from Bosque Redondo to become the admired and proud people they are today.

In 1991, New Mexico State Monuments, the Museum of New Mexico, Navajo, and Apache leaders, began the creation of a memorial to truthfully acknowledge the history here. The Bosque Redondo Memorial opened at Fort Sumner on Jun 4th, 2005, with New Mexican, Navajo, and Mescalero Apache leaders present. The memorial, designed by Navajo Architect David Sloan is shaped like a Navajo Hogan and an Apache teepee and provides an interceptive trail and in-depth information about the history of Fort Sumner and Bosque Redondo Indian Reservation.