Fort Lyon
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Fort Lyon
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One of the Fort's main buildings in 2013.
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| Location | Bent County, Colorado |
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| Nearest city | Las Animas |
| Coordinates | 38°04′27″N 103°07′57″W / 38.07417°N 103.13250°WCoordinates: 38°04′27″N 103°07′57″W / 38.07417°N 103.13250°W |
| Built | 1867 |
| Architect | U.S. Army; et al. |
| Architectural style | Colonial Revival, Bungalow/Craftsman |
| NRHP Reference # | 04000388 |
| CSRHP # | 5BN.117 |
| Added to NRHP | May 05, 2004 |
Fort Lyon, first named Fort Wise, has served in Colorado as a United States Army fort, a sanatorium, a neuropsychiatry facility, and a minimum security prison. The state closed the prison in 2011, and in early 2013 proposed to use the site as a rehabilitation center for homeless people. Then in late 2013 became a rehabilitative transitional housing facility for homeless people with some form of substance abuse problem(s). This is run by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and has been a developing program to current day.
The fort is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Part of the site, the Fort Lyon National Cemetery, which began burials in 1907, remains open.
Fort Lyon was operated on the Colorado eastern plains until 1867. That year a new fort called Fort Lyon, and later Las Animas, Colorado, U.S. Naval Hospital and 5BN117, was built near the present-day town of Las Animas, Colorado. First named after Virginia governor Henry Wise, the fort was renamed in 1862 during the American Civil War. The US Army named it after General Nathaniel Lyon, who was killed in the Battle of Wilson's Creek near Springfield, Missouri in 1861.
Old Fort Lyon was notable as the staging post used by Colonel John Chivington in 1864 as he led an attack by the Third Colorado Cavalry and other forces on friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho camps that became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. As witnesses and survivors emerged, the US Congress investigated, with a resulting national wave of public outrage about the slaughter and mutilation of up to 163 people, primarily women, children, and the elderly. The campground has been designated a National Historic Site.
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