Crumbling adobe wails. Lifeless parade grounds. A rotting
stump that once meant a proud, defiant flagpole. That's the ghost
fort today that once was stirring Ojo Caliente. It lies here on a
lonesome cow range, at the upper end of a rugged box canyon.
No more cavalrymen swinging to their saddles. No more sullen
Apaches camped about nor skulking in the sparsely cedared hills.
The Ojo Caliente stronghold was built on a slope above a
branch of Alamosa Creek. Main part 600 feet long, 150 wide.
Thick adobe walls. Flat earthen roofs. Deep-set doors and
windows. Corner fireplaces. It's all melting away now, almost gone.
But out of here swearing, grim-faced cavalrymen galloped to
fight Apaches. Maybe the red men had caught a lone prospector,
tied him across his own kitchen stove and built a fire in it. Maybe
they'd ambushed another cavalry troop in some defile. Or, as it
really happened, Victorio had just attacked the horse guard of
the Ninth Cavalry half a mile from here, killing or wounding eight
troopers and running off 46 horses.
On this now-dim old parade ground, Geronimo, trapped by
Indian Agent Clum, made his first surrender. A prisoner here,
Geronimo saved a baby girl, Agnes Kelly, from drowning in a
ditch. The baby's father had been one of a cavalry detail
escorting a stagecoach in which rode a pretty girl... marriage
and baby Agnes.
From this fort Agent Clum took 453 captive Apaches on a
three- week trek to the San Carlos reservation in Arizona for the
brewing of greater trouble.
Ojo Caliente stands between two prehistoric Indian pueblos.
There are others near. Long ago these places built up slowly and
died away slowly. It became a land of ghosts for seven or eight
centuries, except for an occasional Apache encampment. And
today once more ghosts have it all to themselves.
To break in upon the unearthly stillness of Ojo Caliente, drive
to Winston, 37 miles from Truth or Consequences, and go 19
miles north on the main-traveled road. Watch for the ere adobe
ruins off on your right.