Fort Supply Cemetery

In June, I joined the Oklahoma Alliance for Geographic Education Summer Teacher Institute to study the Oklahoma Panhandle area from Woodward to Dalhart in Taxes. I can see the cemetery from the edge of US 412 as the highway passes through Fort Supply.  We got off the bus and walked into a look- as- empty field with plain name markers dated to 1908, the year Western State Hospital was established. The Fort Supply Cemetery became the burial place for many mentally ill patients when the property was acquired by the State of Oklahoma in 1908. In 1982, Dr.William Blythe, M.D., former hospital superintendent was the last person buried in the cemetery.

***

Historic Fort Supply was established in 1868, as "Camp of Supply" for the winter campaign against the southern Plains Indians in what is now western Oklahoma. From this post Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer led the Seventh U.S. Cavalry south to the Washita River and destroyed the village of Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle. The military presence in the region was felt for the next twenty-five years as troops from the post performed peace-keeping duties monitoring the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation and the Cherokee Outlet.  When Camp Supply became Fort Supply in1878, the post had become the hub of transportation and communication in a region that included southwest Kansas, the Texas Panhandle, and western Indian Territory. Troops built the roads and telegraph lines that linked the forts, reservations, and region's settlements. They protected the stage coaches, freight haulers, and travelers as they moved along the trails.

The Run of 1893 opened the lands of the Cherokee Outlet to non-Indian settlement. The troops at Fort Supply policed the operation that proved to be the last major task for the soldiers. The frontier was closing and the presence of the army was no longer required. In late 1894, the post was abandoned, and the property turned over to the Department of the Interior.

The old post became the State of Oklahoma's first state-operated mental institution with the arrival of the first patients in 1908. Northwest Center for Behavioral Health continues to serve the mental health needs of Oklahoma. Starting in 1969, the Oklahoma Historical Society assumed responsibility for the five remaining army period buildings. Since 1998, the William S. Key Correctional Center, a minimum security prison facility, has occupied most of the old post and hospital grounds. (http://www.okhistory.org/sites/fshistory)

 ***