General James Henry Carleton initially justified the fort as offering protection to settlers in the Pecos River valley from the Mescalero Apache, Kiowa, and Comanche.

He also created the Bosque Redondo reservation, a 1,600-square-mile (4,100 km2; 1,000,000-acre) [3] area where over 9,000 Navajo and Mescalero Apache were forced to live because of accusations that they were raiding white settlements near their respective homelands.

General Edward Canby, whom Carleton replaced, had first suggested that the Navajo people be moved to a series of reservations and be taught new skills.

Army officers and Indian agents realized that Bosque Redondo was a failure, as it had poor water and too little firewood for the numbers of people who were living there.

When the Bosque Redondo was established, General Carleton ordered Colonel Kit Carson to do whatever necessary to bring first the Mescalero and then the Navajo there.

One man described it as follows: "By slow stages we traveled eastward by present Gallup and Shushbito, Bear spring, which is now called Fort Wingate.

A hundred years after the signing of the treaty that allowed the Navajo people to return to their original homes in the Four Corners region, Fort Sumner was declared a New Mexico State Monument in 1968.

On June 4, 2005, a new museum designed by Navajo architect David N. Sloan was opened on the site as the Bosque Redondo Memorial.