Stop 1 -- Fort Huachuca Museum
(Building 41401)
Welcome to a tour of the Old Post area of Fort Huachuca. As you look toward the hills on either side of you, you will notice you are in a small canyon at the base of the Huachuca Mountains. From this canyon flows Huachuca Creek. In March 1877, a small camp was established by troopers of the 6th Cavalry to patrol the valley and protect ranchers, settlers, and later miners in the area. The original camp of canvas tents, adobe mud, and log buildings were closer to the canyon’s mouth, just beyond the parade ground you see in front of you. The favorable location and lack of disease found in other camps led to the post becoming a permanent fort in 1882. In time, tents yielded to sturdier wood and adobe structures. Along the parade ground are the officer’s quarters, completed by 1884, which are still occupied today. Though originally designed to house lieutenants and captains, they now house Lieutenant Colonels to Major Generals. To your right stand the original barracks buildings for the enlisted soldiers, along with support buildings for the post.
The parade ground was the center of activity of the fort. Here, morning and evening formations, changing of the guard, parades, inspections, drills, and other daily activities of a soldier’s life occurred. The main buildings of an 1880s frontier fort surrounded the rectangular parade field. Despite what Hollywood movies would lead you to believe, there were no high walls of logs or mud surrounding forts in the Arizona territory, or even in most of the West. There wasn’t enough timber or other materials to construct walls, and direct attacks on forts by native warriors simply did not occur.
This building has housed the Fort Huachuca Museum since 1960. It was originally intended as a chapel and a chaplain’s office but was built as a Double Officer’s Quarters in 1892 for one Captain and one Chaplain. The Chaplain at the time, Winfield Scott, however, never occupied the building, and instead remained in the house directly across the street until his retirement in 1893. Chaplain Scott is more famously known in Arizona as the founder of Scottsdale near the city of Phoenix. At some point, the building was extensively modified inside to become a bachelor officer’s quarters, with individual rooms upstairs. In 1920 it became the officer’s club for 10th Cavalry officers, and the main floor became a dance and reception area along with a dining room. It became the post headquarters, keeping that role through the closure and reopening of the post from 1941 to 1959.