Fort Sumner, NM

Fort Sumner is a village in and the county seat of De Baca County, New Mexico, United States. The 2020 census counted 889 residents. Fort Sumner is the spring and fall home of the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. Named after former New Mexico Territory military governor Edwin Vose Sumner, U.S. Fort Sumner was a military fort established in 1862 and charged with the internment of nearby Navajo and Mescalero Apache populations from 1863 to 1868. The short version is that Fort Sumner carries an earlier story into the places people know and use now.

That is the local read on Fort Sumner: its past remains attached to the places people use now. Billy the Kid is buried in the old military cemetery in Fort Sumner, as is Lucien Maxwell. Fort Sumner is located northeast of the center of De Baca County on the north side of the Pecos River. U.S. Route 60 passes through the village as Sumner Avenue, leading east 61 miles to Clovis and west 58 miles to Vaughn.