PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY, Calif. (July 25, 2022) – An artifacts specialist with the City of Monterey seeks more information for a future museum exhibit about the Buffalo Soldiers stationed at the Presidio of Monterey in the early 1900s.
“We want to complete the story,” said Jordan Leininger, who works in the city’s Museum and Cultural Arts Division. He encourages family members of 9th Cavalry Regiment Soldiers stationed in Monterey in 1902-1904 to contact him using information provided at the end of this story.
Leininger is researching the Buffalo Soldiers for an exhibit at the city’s Presidio of Monterey Museum, which is in the Lower Presidio Historic Park, off-post and adjacent to the Presidio of Monterey military installation. City and installation officials created the museum through a partnership, and the city runs the museum.
The free museum shows visitors the military history of Monterey from the indigenous peoples of the area to the modern-day PoM and Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, but other than a small panel of information included in a historic walk behind the museum, there is nothing about the Buffalo Soldiers, Leininger said.
Museum officials want to fix the omission and familiarize visitors with the Buffalo Soldiers and their place in Monterey’s history.
The history of the Buffalo Soldiers starts after the Civil War when, on July 28, Congress passed the Army Organization Act of 1866 and created four all-Black units―the 9th and 10th Cavalry and 24th and 25th Infantry regiments. The Army sent the units to the American western frontier, where, many believe, people started calling them “Buffalo Soldiers” because their hair resembled the fur of buffalos and because of their ferociousness in battle.
Leininger said the Buffalo Soldiers are an important part of American history, and their time in Monterey contributes to a greater understanding of that history.
“When you think of the Civil War and the Westward Expansion, one of the big things that you think about when the United States is moving west is the Buffalo Soldiers, how they came out and who these men were,” Leininger said.
Leininger said he began researching Monterey’s Buffalo Soldiers in January 2020 and hopes to complete the exhibit by the end of the year. The exhibit will include a mannequin wearing a uniform, photos, a map and other items.
Leininger is also in the process of completing a nearly 20-page paper entitled “The Lost History of the Buffalo Soldiers at the Presidio of Monterey” that he will make available to the public when he finishes it.
Cameron Binkley, command historian for DLIFLC, said the museum is a great way to learn about the history of the Army in Monterey, and it is an excellent idea to add an exhibit about Monterey’s Buffalo Soldiers.
The exhibit will use interesting artifacts and images to help museum visitors see change over time, Binkley said.
“Creating an exhibit about them automatically touches upon important topics of diversity that are still very relevant to today’s service men and women and the public as well,” Binkley said.
Leininger said there is not a lot of information available about the Buffalo Soldiers in Monterey, but he was able to establish a basic timeline thanks to DLIFLC historic archives and digitized newspapers at the Monterey Public Library and San Jose State University’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Library.
After the Philippine-American War, Buffalo Soldiers assigned to Companies A, B, C and D, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, landed San Francisco in 1902 and came to the military installation that is now the Presidio of Monterey, Leininger said.
The 15th Infantry Regiment was camping at what is now Soldier Field, and the Buffalo Soldiers were not allowed to camp in the same area as the 15th Inf. Regt., so they set up camp in Pacific Grove in what is now the Hopkins Marine Station area, Leininger said.
They stayed in the camp from November 1902 until about December 1903 when the barracks were ready and they moved in, Leininger said. The barracks, in Buildings 450, 451, 452 and 453 on the Presidio, are currently Asian language classrooms.
Leininger said he learned from local newspapers that the Buffalo Soldiers trained, improved their marksmanship and began breaking in new horses in the summer of 1903. One photo shows them marching in a parade in Pacific Grove, a municipality next to Monterey.
They also served as early park rangers, and in 1904 the Army sent them to Yosemite and Kings Canyon National Parks, where they herded sheep, kept poachers out of the parks and helped develop the first marked national park trail in the United States, Leininger said.
“They did that for that whole summer and came back and about a month later they were shipped out,” Leininger said.
Leininger said he would like more detail about why the Buffalo Soldiers were in Monterey, where they went and what the Soldiers and their families thought about their time here.
“I’m not asking people to give us anything,” Leininger said. “I would love at a minimum just to get a look at these items just to get a better picture, and be able to scan them, take pictures of them, so we can use it for this history and complete it.”
Contact Leininger at leininger@monterey.org or (831) 646-5648. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. For more information, visit https://monterey.org/city_facilities/museums/discover_museums/presidio_of_monterey_museum.php
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