Award of a $1,176,800 contract for construction at the Wingate School at Fort Wingate, New Mexico, to provide facilities that will increase the school's capacity by about 325 Indian students, was announced today by the Department of the Interior.
The project will greatly expand the Indian Bureau's existing boarding school plant at Fort Wingate, and will include replacement of a dormitory which has been found unsafe for further use. It involves the construction of a school building containing 17 classrooms, construction of three new dormitories and rehabilitation of a fourth, and the remodeling of a kitchen and dining room and student recreation room.
For several months the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been stepping up its school construction program with the aim of providing classroom space for all Indian school-age children who are not already enrolled in public or mission schools.
This project at Fort Wingate, one of the historic outposts of the 19th century Southwest, will make the increase in enrollment possible especially at the high school level during the coming school year.
Necessary rehabilitation work to enlarge and improve kitchen and dining facilities and to repair the existing dormitory will be carried out first under the contract. Then construction will begin immediately on the new facilities so that the entire program will be completed and in full operation by December 1.
The new dormitories and classroom building will be of single-story construction.
The successful bidder was George A. Rutherford, Inc., Albuquerque, New Mexico. Four higher bids were received ranging from $1,189,691 to $1,333,280.
