Building 1372

Building 1372, a Wagon Scales Building at Fort Bliss, was built in 1918 with a weighing platform on its south side as part of Forage Yard No. 1, which provisioned cavalry horses from 1919 until 1943. The initial yard also included two granaries, a small stone latrine, and eleven open haysheds; three of the haysheds were later combined and survive as Building 1208, and one granary survives as Building 1361. Forage Yard No. 1 served not only Fort Bliss but also Army units stationed from Douglas, Arizona, to the Texas Big Bend. Disturbances along the U.S.-Mexican border stemming from the Mexican Revolution from 1910 to 1921 led to a string of outposts on the border, with Fort Bliss as the nation’s premier Army post there and the logistic and supply center for the Army’s Mexican Border Zone. Fort Bliss’s 1st Cavalry Division patrolled the border to deter bandits from crossing into the U.S., and because horses were the best way to traverse the rough terrain, the division continued these patrols through the 1930s. Fort Bliss became the largest cavalry post in the U.S. and eventually the last active cavalry post in the U.S. Army. Building 1372 was used to weigh wagons carrying forage for the horses and mules supplied by Forage Yard No. 1, and it contains a Fairbanks weighing scale designed to weigh items up to 60,000 pounds. Trucks replaced wagons in 1941, when the Army’s El Paso District had 8,000 horses consuming 40 tons of oats daily. In 1943 the 1st Cavalry Division was dismounted, ending the need for Building 1372, which was renovated in 2007 as part of construction of the nearby commissary.

Fort Bliss, Texas · United States