adventures in arizona: ft bowie

our friends, the allertons, took us out to ft. bowie (boo-ee), arizona for a hike up to the old fort. ft. bowie was the nerve center for military encounters with the chiricahua apache indians, led first by cochise and then by geronimo. the two conflicts that led to the establishment of the fort were the bascom affair and the battle of apache pass. locations of both of these conflicts are on the trail to the hike with lots of information posted along the way.

at an apache settlement. he told us he was making a fire

too busy making fire to smile for the camera..

the apache spring. this was the source of water  and the center of activity

we of course, had to climb up!

in 1861 an apache raiding party kidnapped a local cattle rancher's cattle and his twelve year old son. cochise and his band was falsely accused of the wrongdoing and was invited by army lt. george bascom to the army camp. cochise denied having anything to do with it and offered to look into the matter with other apache groups, but bascom didn't believe him and tried to arrest him. cochise escaped, but his family was held hostage and later killed after cochise executed us army personnel. this set off what would be the apache wars which lasted for 25 years. ft. bowie was built to host operations against the apaches and to protect apache pass (and apache spring). military operations accumulated in 1866 with the surrender of geronimo. the chiriacahua indians were then banished to florida and alabama. the fort was active from 1862-1894 and after geronimo's surrender life on the fort was somewhat enjoyable. 

the ruins of ft. bowie

there is a great visitor center with a small museum. a park ranger was present the saturday morning we took our trek and was available to answer questions. the kids all had fun taking turns on the very, very old bugle. i'm sure this thing has some old, old spit in it... i didn't take a turn. anyway, band geek in the making?