Blog

As we left New Mexico behind we found ourselves in the far southeast corner of Arizona. We camped just down the road from Fort Bowie so we made that our first destination as our tour of the southwest continued across the southern portion of Arizona.

Just enough of Fort Bowie still remains to imagine what it might have been like in the late 1800’s when the active fort housed a couple hundred soldiers. Established in 1862 following a battle between the US Army and the Chiricahua Apache, the Fort grew into a sizeable outpost meant to protect Apache Pass and a reliable spring near the pass. Abandoned in 1894 following the surrender of Geronimo in 1886 it has since been weathered down to foundations and a few walls of the old buildings today.

With the park service map illustrating the buildings that used to be here, along with the signage by the old buildings that circled the parade ground you can get a foggy picture of what used to exist here.

From it’s meager beginnings consisting of 13 tents it grew into quite a compound. In the later days there was even a steam engine that was used to produce ice, which must have been quite the luxury at the end of the 1800’s.

Although it represents what is to me, a sad chapter of our history, that ultimately led to the removal of the Chiricahua Apache from their homelands, it is still interesting to walk the grounds and think about those days so many years ago.