Pecos park renovates 200-year-old trading post

Historic preservation specialist Jeff Brown is hoping his work crews won't find the spot where legs and arms are buried at Pecos National Historical Park. The appendages would be those amputated from Civil War soldiers in 1862 at a makeshift hospital housed in Kozlowski's Trading Post east of Santa Fe. Finding the bony remains, while exciting, would slow down Brown's current project: a six-year renovation of the almost 2-century-old stage stop and tavern. The low-slung pink stucco building with faded turquoise trim along N.M. 63 was a popular stop on the Santa Fe Trail for decades. Brown and crew will restore the adobe-and-pine building to its look from the 1940s and '50s, when E.E. "Buddy" Fogelson and his actress wife, Greer Garson, used the trading post as headquarters for their Forked Lightning Ranch. The historic character of the building and any usable original materials will be preserved, but it will be upgraded to house administrative offices and a place to greet visitors. Along with restoring the old trading post, Pecos National Historical Park plans to open 3,000 acres east of the building along the Pecos River, long closed to the public except for special occasions. The Pecos National Historical Park protects the ruins of Pecos Pueblo, a historic Catholic church and the site of the Civil War battle of Glorieta Pass. The original room of the trading post dates to 1810, according to a plaque posted on the building by Daughters of the American Revolution. When Polish immigrant Martin Kozlowski left the Army after five years fighting Apaches, he moved into the old building near Pecos Pueblo in 1858. He needed some room for 10 children he and his wife would eventually raise there...read more