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NACO, Ariz. — Four buildings comprising the junior officers’ quarters at historic Camp Newell were severely damaged by fire on Sunday afternoon.
Arson is suspected, but Naco Fire Chief Jesus Morales said an investigation must be completed before determining any cause.
No other buildings were damaged, and there were no injuries.
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Because they were adobe structures, the walls of the officers’ quarters were not destroyed. However, the wooden roofs burned completely.
The fire was reported to authorities as starting at 3:38 p.m.
Jim Pionke, assistant chief of the Naco Fire Department, said the wind helped the fire leap from the building closest to the road, to the three others.
“It was astounding how quickly it moved from one building to the next,” Pionke said.
Inside of 30 to 60 seconds from their fire crew’s arrival, the second building was burning, he added.
It took crews about an hour to bring the fire under control, Pionke said.
Crews from Old Bisbee and San Jose departments also assisted. Pionke credited Bisbee with bringing a water cannon that greatly helped put out the fire.
The U.S. Border Patrol, which routinely patrols the area, assisted with traffic control, Pionke said.
Morales said it is a shame that the officers’ quarters were damaged.
“My grandfather has the original picture when the Army was building this,” he said, gesturing around the facility.
All of the camp complex, he added, is a fire hazard because of its age, and needs major rehabilitation.
Pionke said about three years ago people rented some of the officers’ quarters.
The Newell Cantonment, also known as Camp Newell, was a border outpost in the early 1900s. The officers’ quarters were part of a 53-acre site at the intersection of Willson Road and Seventh Street.
After a bloody raid by Villa on Columbus, N.M., in 1916, President Wilson ordered 6,000 troops to the border to prevent further incursions, according to Wikipedia.org.
Troops in the region, including Naco, Ariz., were assembled into Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing’s punitive expedition that chased the wily guerrilla leader Villa unsuccessfully through Mexico. A young George S. Patton was involved in that campaign, which reputedly saw the Army’s last horse-mounted cavalry charge.
The current location of the cantonment was established in 1919 on land owned by John J. Newell, who leased the site to the U.S. War Department for $1 per year, according to Christian Deichert, who has devoted a Web site to the “Ghost Forts of the Southwest.”
“The exact lease agreement terms are not known,” said Deichert, who is currently serving with the U.S. Army in Germany. In an e-mail Sunday night, he informed the Herald/Review: “It’s said that the lease to the Army was $1 a year, but I’m not sure. What is certain is that Newell leased the land to the Army, the Army occupied the cantonment until 1926, and then the tax records show the land returning to Newell’s development company and the improvements are listed on the property tax bill.”
Deichert said, “Of all of the construction of Army buildings on the border at that time, it was the only site constructed out of adobe.”
Deichert further commented, “There is no hard and fast proof that the ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ of the 9th and 10th Cavalry were at the Newell Cantonment, but it’s certain that this site was built by the Army to help secure the border.”
“In the 1930s,” Deichert continued, “it was used as a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, then later the Newell family rented out the barracks and houses as apartments. Before the cantonment was completed, the Army was using a temporary encampment located near the site of what is now the golf course in Naco.”
Rebecca Orozco, director of Southwest Studies at Cochise College, was shocked to hear about the fire.
A company called VisionQuest owns 17 acres of Camp Newell.
Orozco is part of an informal group working on listing the facility on the National Register of Historic Places.
“Every day that goes by, it becomes more damaged,” she said. “We were always hopeful we could (rehabilitate it).”
There was a past attempt to turn the facilities into a heritage park back in the early 1990s — a proposal that divided Naco, partially because of safety concerns.
Herald/Review Lifestyle Editor Karen Weil can be reached at 515-4620 or by e-mail at karen.weil@svherald.com. Contributing to the story was City Editor Ted Morris, 515-4614, cityeditor@svherald.com.
TheSilverRose wrote on Jun 27, 2009 10:22 PM:
Thank You! "