Fort Thorn, New Mexico, was a settlement and military outpost established by Captain Israel Richardson in December 1853 on the West bank of the Rio Grande, at Santa Barbara, a new settlement northwest of the present-day community of Hatch, New Mexico, and West of Salem in Doña Ana County. Selection of the Santa Barbara site for Fort Thorn was dictated by the need to guard a sparsely settled segment of the Santa Fe-El Paso Road, as well as the San Diego Crossing, for the wagon road to California laid out in November 1846 by Major Philip St. George Cooke. From the San Diego Crossing, the road extended to the southern end of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, crossing the Jornada del Muerto five miles to the East, over a pass just below San Diego Mountain.

Originally, the post was named Cantonment Garland; it was renamed for 1st Lieutenant Herman Thorn of the 2nd U.S. Infantry, who drowned in the Colorado River in 1849. He had previously been an aide to General John Garland, the new commander of the Ninth Military District, which encompassed New Mexico Territory in 1853. The fort was first garrisoned by the 3rd U.S. Infantry from Fort Webster on the right bank of the Rio Grande at Santa Barbara. The fort was built of adobe bricks and included an enclosing wall, with only the hospital located outside it. The fort also had a 3.5-mile-long acequia that brought water from the Rio Grande to irrigate the post’s farms and powered a sawmill. It protected settlers and travelers from Apache Indians and outlaw attacks.

In 1854, the Gadsden Purchase was finalized, and New Mexico’s general military policy was consolidation. The primary objectives were to protect the principal centers of population and to station troops in positions along Apache raiding routes.

That year, an agency for the Apache Indians began operating at the fort. Its agent was Dr. Michael Steck, trusted by Apache leaders and recommended by Army officers in the New Mexico command in a letter to President Peirce as having “knowledge of the country, and of the Indians, their language and habits.” They also wrote: “his appointment would give entire satisfaction to the military authorities.”

Fort Thorn gained a post office in 1855.

In a September 1856 Sanitary Report,  Assistant Surgeon T. Charlton Henry described the location of Fort Thorn:

“The position of Fort Thorn is somewhat elevated above the level of the Rio Grande del Norte, whose waters pass within a mile of the post. Its distance is 85 miles below Fort Craig, on the western side of the river, and 51 miles above Fort Fillmore; the position of which latter post is on the eastern side of the Rio Grande. Two miles westward of Fort Thorn, a llano nearly 35 miles wide extends, but a few undulating hills partially break it. This mesa forms an abutment of some 30 to 40 feet upon the same elevation of ground on which Fort Thorn is situated. The river bottom is about 100 yards in front of the post, with more or less growth of timber, principally the Salix viminalis and Populus canadensis. The broken and projecting portion of the mesa, to the West, is mostly red clay, and mingled with it is a comparative abundance of native gypsum in laminated conglomerations and in very scattered masses. The soil between the fort and the mesa westward is sandy, abounding in a low growth of prosopsis and artemisia. The post itself is on ground composed of a mixture of clay and sand, the former being uppermost.

Eastward and across the river, five miles distant, is a chain of mountains, beyond which lies the Jornada del Muerto, through which passes the principal wagon road from Santa Fe to El Paso del Norte. At periods of overflow of the river, and during the early fall months, standing pools are formed about the vicinity of the post. Many of these pools are shaded by trees of the cottonwood species; only now, however, partially, much of the timber having been cut away.”

 

Sitting near an extensive marsh and stagnant water, Malaria became a serious problem among the garrison at Fort Thorn at this time. During the six years covered by the surgeon general’s 1856 report, the surgeon general received quarterly reports of the sick from 24 posts in New Mexico. However, no more than 10 positions were usually garrisoned at any given time. In general, each post had its own surgeon.

The disease was caused by an unusually prolonged rise in temperature and the absence of rain, which prevented the river from flowing and caused water to stagnate; fevers began in mid-July and continued into the following months. The command then consisted of two companies, and the sick report numbered 70 cases. The garrison was reduced on September 1 to one company of infantry, half of which was later detached to Fort Fillmore. During this time, scarcely a man of this command could be considered fit for the performance of ordinary garrison duty.

As a consequence of repeated epidemics of Malaria, the fort was proclaimed to be the “sickliest post in the Territory.”

In 1859, Malaria among the garrison led to the post’s closure. Fort Thorn’s post office closed the same year.

During the 1860 census taken on August 3 and 5, 1860, 32 people were counted in the Fort Thorn Township.

The Indian agency continued to operate briefly even after the fort closed. The agency and the nearby settlement of Santa Barbara were abandoned in October 1860, following a Navajo raid on the agency reported on October 25, 1860.

 

“Last week a party of Navajo made a descent on Fort Thorn and succeeded in driving off a lot of stock, besides killing one ox and wounding two others belonging to Mr. Barnes. They were pursued by a party of Apache, overtaken, and all the property recovered, but the Indians succeeded in making their escape. The settlers at the fort, numbering some 40, apprehending a renewal of hostilities, have abandoned the place and come into the Mesilla valley for security. They brought several thousand head of stock. The settlement is consequently entirely broken up.”

— Mesilla Times

 

During the Civil War, a site 15 miles upriver from Fort Thorn was the scene of the Skirmish near Fort Thorn. The engagement was between three companies of the Regiment of Mounted Rifles and Bethel Coopwood’s cavalrymen of the Confederate Army on September 26, 1861. Subsequently, General Henry Hopkins Sibley used the fort as an assembly point for his Sibley Expedition before invading northern New Mexico.

“Taking up my position, a single shot was fired. I immediately dismounted and went into action, and the action lasted an hour and 42 minutes.”

— Captain Bethel Coopwood

In July and August 1862, detachments of the California Column used the fort after Lieutenant Colonel Edward E. Eyer, 1st Regiment California Volunteer Cavalry, occupied it on July 5, before crossing over the flooded Rio Grande two weeks later at San Diego Crossing to occupy Mesilla, New Mexico Territory, and Franklin, Texas.

The site was reoccupied in 1875 and renamed for General Edward Hatch, then Commander of the New Mexico Military District.

A flood of the Rio Grande washed away most of the fort’s site in 1889, changing the river’s course. The remains of a post cemetery remain.