Following the disastrous failure of the U.S. Government's Bosque Redondo experiment, the reservation land returned to the public domain. In 1870 the Army sold the fort buildings and other improvements to Lucien B. Maxwell, and in 1871 he moved his family into the former military post. Within a year, Fort Sumner had become a small farm and ranch community of about 200 people. During the 1870s and 1880s, it was a small isolated village near the southern boundary of San Miguel County. Because the sheriff and his deputies were based at the county seat in Las Vegas, about 120 miles away, they rarely visited Fort Sumner. This isolation drew drifters and outlaws seeking to avoid the law. After the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid and several friends, including Tom Folliard and Charlie Bowdre, took refuge there. Charlie and his wife Manuela made their home in the old Post Hospital building, and Billy the Kid was recorded on the 1880 Census as part of their Fort Sumner household.