# @downinnadesert on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DdKpgHhDwVr
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/70299974-downinnadesert-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/caf4a60fca.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-09-12T00:00:11.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Down In The Desert🌵 (@downinnadesert) — https://gondola.cc/downinnadesert

## Caption

There were 35 permanent military camps built along 1,200 miles of the US and Mexico border. One is still standing and it is in Arizona.

It starts in 1910. The Mexican Revolution breaks out and commanders at Fort Huachuca put a tent camp at the spot where the El Paso and Southwestern railroad crosses into Mexico. That line ran American-owned mines in Sonora up to processing sites on this side. The job was protecting the railroad, stopping smuggling, and keeping the fighting from spilling over.

The men sent to do it were the 9th and 10th Cavalry and later the 25th Infantry. All-Black regiments formed after the Civil War. The Buffalo Soldiers.

In 1919 the War Department replaced the tents with a permanent post. More than twenty adobe buildings. Barracks, officers’ housing, a hospital, a parade ground.

Rebecca Orozco of the Naco Heritage Alliance has spent decades on this site and she puts the posting plainly. Part of it was racial, getting them out of sight. Part of it was that Black regiments made up a large share of the standing Army at the time.

The Army pulled out in 1923. Most of the 35 camps got taken apart so the lumber could be hauled off and used somewhere else. Only two had been built out of adobe, and nobody had any use for old mud brick.

So Camp Naco just stayed there. Neglect is the entire reason it survived.

It went private in 1937 and sat for close to seventy years. Vandalism, weather, erosion, three separate fires. Bisbee bought it in 2018.

In May 2022 the National Trust for Historic Preservation named it one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. After that the State of Arizona put in $4.6 million and the Mellon Foundation put in $3.5 million.

Ground broke on Phase One in January 2025. The old hospital becomes an interpretive center. The barracks become classrooms and studios. The parade ground becomes an outdoor venue.

600 yards from the border, three and a half hours from Phoenix, and most people in this state have never heard of it.

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#CampNaco #BuffaloSoldiers #Bisbee #ArizonaNews #DownInnaDesert

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## Tags

campnaco, buffalosoldiers, downinnadesert, bisbee, arizonanews

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