The following is an excerpt from the "More Than Just Words: A Look at the Mission and History of FLC by Matthew Roy"
But what exactly is the legacy that Fort Lewis has left? And how did a military post turn into a college?
Duane Smith, retired FLC professor and specialist in southwest Colorado history, said FLC has an extraordinary history that dates all the way back to 1878 when it was just a military post.
“Fort Lewis was originally a military post located west of Durango in Pagosa Springs, Colorado,” Smith said. “However, this location was not ideal because it was too far from the Ute and Navajo Reservation and because there were gambling hells in Pagosa Springs.”
Mona C. Charles, a former archeology professor at FLC, writes “Fort Lewis then moved just south of Hesperus, Colorado, for this location was much more fruitful and better suited the needs of the fort at the time.”
In 1890, with relative peace between white citizens and Native Americans, the troops began moving out of Fort Lewis, Smith said. It served temporarily as the Ute Indian Agency and became an Indian Boarding School after it was decommissioned in 1891.
Smith said Fort Lewis was an Indian Boarding School for about 20 years until 1911, when the land was then used for a high school.
According to Charles, this school came with two conditions though: that a learning institution would be on the land, and that Indian students would be admitted free of tuition. Both of these conditions are still implemented at FLC today, more than 100 years later.
This goes along with what Davis said about the tuition waiver. It is not an FLC program, it is a Colorado program so even if FLC wanted to eliminate the tuition waiver, they couldn’t.
Fort Lewis High school was expanded into a 2-year college in the 1930s, according to Charles.
In the late 1950s Fort Lewis moved to Durango and became a 4-year institution in 1962, said Smith.
Smith loves the commitment that FLC has towards Native American students, because it shows that FLC still remains true to its foundation, but acknowledges that significant changes have occurred since he began teaching here in 1964 , he said.
“I think we need to figure out what our niche is. What is it that FLC does really well that other institutions don’t do as well? Where can we stand out?” said Davis. “Are we the size that we want to be right now, do we want to be four thousand do we want to be five thousand? I think that is another question. Just how big do we want to be?”