Normally i am not a nut on old forts. Oh, sure, something like Fort McHenry is on the list but i will not generally go out of my way to visit one. Fort Union was on the way to somewhere else and the preview pics were intriguing. What you saw were adobe-esque structures that were dissolving away with time. Like they belonged to some neolithic culture from the year 1848 BCE.
Nope, it was simply some American soldiers from 1848 CE.
Fort Union was the center of the American cosmos when the west was opening up and built to protect the new assets of the new land from the people who already lived there. Built along the I-95 of its day, the Sante Fe Trail, It could keep and eye on things and also serve as a distribution point for other forts yet to be built.
As a fort, it had barracks, commerce, officer quarters, a work are for things that broke down and needed repair, and it even had a bakery. It also housed a hospital that was considered the best within a 500 mile radius which now looks like this (not to mention pretty un-hospital-y).
You walked along the campus which was quite large and it was too cool to worry much about rattlers.
In front of the visitor center stood a lone flag that looked out over the land just as it was back in its heyday. I had to scoot because a wall of rain was heading north.
The fort was decommissioned after those dang railroads made the Santa Fe Trail obsolete. And just like the cities of commerce that popped along it the trail to repair wheels, sell supplies, offer drink and rest, they faded back into obscurity when the trail was no longer necessary. So, too, was the fort abandoned. It would have fully returned to the earth as crumbled adobe but for the help of some freemasons who got the clay ball rolling, so to speak.
The Big World 