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"Mason's Fort", Dona Ana County, NM, southwest United States
In 1945, at the West Mesa site of what is now (2003) occupied by the Las
Cruces, New Mexico, International Airport, the U. S. Army Air Corps built
an auxiliary airfield to their larger field in Deming, New Mexico.
The Air Force used the desert between the two fields to train B-25 flight
crews in the use of the Norden Bomb Sight. Targets were set up in the
desert. Quonset huts were erected to house cadre and trainees.
Ten years later, in 1955, the Air Force declared the West Mesa site
surplus and deeded it to the City of Las Cruces.
Among the few structures on the West Mesa, were the ruins of Mason's
Fort, sometimes called, in error, Fort Mason. Mason's Fort
was actually a stage coach stop--abandoned about fifty years earlier.
Ruins of the stage coach stop and the hotel, having no military connection
whatsoever, were still there as ghost town structures in the 1940's.
Did the ruins of Mason's Fort serve as a target for the bomb sight trainees?
Did the ghostly ruins suffer having flour sacks dropped on them from the
desert skies? World War II 100-pound practice bombs were found near
the site in 2003 by Arnold Niederhofer of El Paso.