Fort Bliss

Fort Bliss

Fort Bliss is a United States Army post in New Mexico and Texas, with its headquarters in El Paso, Texas. Named in honor of LTC William Bliss, a mathematics professor who was the son-in-law of President Zachary Taylor, Ft. Bliss has an area of about 1,700 square miles. It is the largest installation in FORSCOM and second-largest in the Army overall.

About Fort Bliss in brief

Summary Fort BlissFort Bliss is a United States Army post in New Mexico and Texas, with its headquarters in El Paso, Texas. Named in honor of LTC William Bliss, a mathematics professor who was the son-in-law of President Zachary Taylor, Ft. Bliss has an area of about 1,700 square miles. It is the largest installation in FORSCOM and second-largest in the Army overall. Fort Bliss provides the largest contiguous tract of restricted airspace in the Continental United States, used for missile and artillery training and testing. At 992,000 acres boasts the largest maneuver area. The garrison’s land area is accounted at 1.12 million acres, ranging to the boundaries of the Lincoln National Forest and White Sands Missile Range. The post was first established at the site of Coon’s Ranch : 21 and, along with Fort Selden and other Southwestern outposts, protected recently won territory from harassing Apaches and Comanches, provided law and order, and escorted the forty-niners. Other forts in the frontier fort system were Forts Griffin, Concho, Belknap, Chadbourne, Stockton, Davis, Richardson, McKavett, Clark, McIntosh, Inge and Phantom Hill in Texas, and Fort Sill in Oklahoma. The installation is also home to the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command, the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, the 212th Fires Brigade, and the 402nd Field Art artillery Brigade. The headquarters for the El Paso Intelligence Center, a federal tactical operational intelligence center, is hosted at Fort Bliss.

Its DoD counterpart, Joint Task Force North, is at Biggs Army Airfield. Biggs Field, a military airport located atFort Bliss, is designated a military power projection platform. The 1st Armored Division returned to US soil in 2011 after 40 years in Germany, supported by the 1th Armored Division Sustainment Brigade. Until the outbreak of the American Civil War, most of these troops were units of the 2nd Regiment of Texas, which took the garrison to surrender to the Confederacy on March 31, 1861. In September 1851, the Post Opposite El Paso and the Post at San Elizario were closed, the soldiers moved 40 miles north to Fort Fillmore. On 11 January 1854, Companies B, E, I and K of the 8th Infantry, under the command of Lt. Col. Edmund B. Alexander, established Post of El Paso at Magoffinsville under orders from Secretary of Jefferson Davis. On March 1854: 23:23 Col. William Wallace Smith, a veteran of Mexican War, was cited for gallantry in action. There it remained for the next 14 years, serving as a base for troops guarding the area against Apache attacks against the Apache attacks. On April 14, 1861, Col. Isaac Duzen Reeve took command of the Confederate 2nd Infantry Brigade, which later took the post to the Confederate States of America.