A visit to Fort Bowie involves a 1.5 mile hike that takes you past the Fort Cemetery and Apache Springs before reaching the plateau where the fort was located after being moved east of its original location.
Apache Springs is the only reliable water (read four seasons) for Apache Pass, it has been used by man for at least a millennium. Most of the graves in the cemetery were the result of the fight between the US Army and the Chiricahua Apache Indians over the control of the springs.
The Graveyard is a sobering place with such inscriptions as ‘Killed by the Apaches,’ ‘Met his death at the hands of the Apaches,’ ‘Died of wounds inflicted by Apache Indians,’ ‘Tortured and killed by Apaches’ or ‘In Memory of Little Robe, Son of Geronimo, Apache Chief, Died September 10, 1885, Age Two Years.’ There is even one Medal of Honor winner previously buried here.
The Fort Bowie founded in 1862 saw almost 25 years of conflict. Such great Apache chiefs as Mangas Colorados, Cochise, and Naiche all visited this place. Cochise made it particularly memorable by cutting a gash in the back of an army tent and escaping over the hills. In the end it was a Chiricahua named Geronimo who managed to capture the attention of the public for being pursued by the army for his daring and bloody raids in Arizona, New Mexico and Mexico.
On a January day in 1894, Alther Feldman of Tucson climbed a hill above the fort and took the iconic picture of Fort Bowie at its zenith. Detailed there is the steel flag pole in the middle of the parade grounds, the transplanted cotton woods shading the officers’ quarters, the unsurfaced tennis courts, the rows of fire wood for the steam-powered ice machine providing ice cream, cold beer and preservation of perishables, the corals, stables, and a large hospital. Nine months later Fort Bowie was abandoned to the scavengers.
Standing alone on the same spot where the photographer placed his tripod I took this picture where now there is only a wooden flag pole in the middle of the parade ground and the crumbling adobe walls that are left facing the fickle weather and relentless winds of Apache Pass.
