Huachuca Museum Society - Gift Shop

08/03/2026

08/03/2026

Armed Forces Day exhibit and display area, U.S. Army Electronic Proving Ground, Fort Huachuca 1958.
U.S. Army photo.

08/03/2026

Libby Army Airfield 1958

08/03/2026

Fort Hootchie Kootchie in the 1960s

From Huachuca Illustrated Magazine by James P Finley

Nicolas Proffitt, a 1961 graduate of Buena High School, came to Fort Huachuca as a teenaged dependent in the late 1950s, the son of a career noncommissioned officer.
A war correspondent in Vietnam and a Newsweek editor, Proffitt published his first novel, Gardens of Stone, in 1983. The book was made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola in 1987. In Gardens of Stone, Proffitt recorded his youthful impressions of the drive down from Tucson and the Fort Huachuca community.

"The depth of their error was fully realized only when they had cleared the outskirts of [Tucson] and were heading south, toward Mexico, on the last leg of the long journey. The boy could not believe his eyes. It was a moonscape. Great brown boulders and faraway, mud colored mountains. Small clumps of sagebrush and an occasional saguaro, its arms spread wide like a bogeyman’s. Shimmering waves of heat came off the highway in front of them, and dust devils blew up here and there between them and the horizon. They went mile after mile without seeing a single sign of human habitation. That did not surprise the boy at all.
Who could live in such country? Every now and then they would see a tarantula cross the road, black and big around as a baby’s head, or snakes squished flat by trucks...."

He would tell his parents:
" I’m not living here,” he announced. “This Fort Hootchie Kootchie is at the end of the world, and I’m not going to live there. I’m running away from home first chance I get.
The author calls upon more childhood visions to describe his first school bus ride to the high school in Sierra Vista:
"The bus ride was like an ascent up through the circles of Dante’s hell. Fort Huachuca spread like warm oleo across a plateau overlooking a wide valley and ringed with brown mountains....
The town and the high school were just as bad. The boy sat alone on the school bus, hunched in the corner of the long rear seat as they crawled around the post; then through the dusty town of Sierra Vista, sitting like an unlanced boil just outside the main gate; and finally into the even dustier parking lot of Buena High School."

08/02/2026

STRATCOM

From: Fort Huachuca History of Development
By Dawn A. Morrison and Adam D. Smith

In July 1967, the Army’s STRATCOM moved its headquarters to Fort Huachuca from Washington, D.C. and EPG became a “tenant".
STRATCOM (today known as the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command [NETCOM]) answered to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff and was comparable to CONARC or AMC.
The arrival of STRATCOM and the U.S. Army Intelligence Center and School (1971) made Fort Huachuca “the major military installation in Arizona and one of prominence throughout the Southwest."

08/01/2026

Roy Toy, Fort Playset
Available in the gift shop

07/31/2026

First Signal Units Arrive at Fort Huachuca 1954

From Huachuca Illustrated Magazine by James P Finley

One of the first soldiers to arrive at Fort Huachuca in January 1954 to reopen the post was Master Sgt. Harry Waldschmidt. He was transferring from Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. In Jac Hein’s book, Sierra Vista: It’s People and Neighbors, Waldschmidt tells about the experience.
"I came out here with orders to reactivate Fort Huachuca on February 1, 1954. That morning, we opened the wire gates and that’s the morning the Army Proving Ground was born.
Col. Earl F. Cook was the first commanding officer. Two weeks later, on February 15, Gen. Emil Lenzner arrived to take command.
To say the place was a mess would be putting it mildly. The area was covered with animals: jackrabbits, skunks, white tail deer, buffalo, rattlesnakes, roadrunners, quail, coatimundi, javelina, you name it; even wildcats and mountain lions up in the canyons."

Paul Nott was a civilian instructor at Fort Huachuca during the Korean War and later remembered the arrival of troops at the post.
"One morning a few of us were having coffee—Paul Keating and some of the other fellows and I. The town was quiet at that time. It was...after the Korea shutdown of the fort. As I looked down what is now Fry Boulevard, I saw headlights of automobiles coming our way. Soon we realized it was a convoy. The next thing we knew a staff car driven by a colonel pulled up by the cafe and I saw the flags with the stars. I went out and greeted Gen. Emil Lenzner and invited him in for a cup of coffee."

Capt. David C. Buscall commanded Company C, 303d Signal Battalion, one of the first units to arrive at the post. In May 1951 he brought his convoy through Fort Huachuca’s gate.
Their first order of business was to restore the fort’s military appearance.
"The first week or two that we were here about all we did was pick up rocks and weeds and trash. We cleaned up the post. Oh, it was a mess! While we were cleaning up the grounds and buildings, a forest fire broke out along the lower end of the fort and spread down the Huachucas. Naturally, we were called upon to help battle the blaze. It burned clear down to Miller Peak. It was vitally important that we keep some lines of communications open to residents of the area and other troops and people who were trying to contain the fire."

07/30/2026

Mr Anderson Pollard, WW2 Veteran, at Old Post Fort Huachuca