A Pass With a Dependable Spring
Apache Pass is a gap between the Chiricahua Mountains and the Dos Cabezas Mountains in southeastern Arizona. Its importance came down to water. In dry basin-and-range country, a spring that keeps flowing becomes a landmark, and Apache Spring at the pass was one. For the Chiricahua Apache, whose homelands included these mountains, it was part of familiar ground. For travelers heading east and west across the desert, it was one of the few places where they could count on a drink.
That overlap is the root of the story. A route that was used by Apache families for generations became, in the mid-nineteenth century, a corridor for people from outside the region who had little interest in sharing it.
The Overland Mail and the Bascom Affair
After the United States took over the region in the 1840s and 1850s, wagon trains and then stage lines began to use the pass. The Butterfield Overland Mail ran a route through Apache Pass beginning in 1858, with a station near the spring.
In February 1861, the Bascom affair took place near the stage station. A young army officer, Lieutenant George Bascom, summoned Cochise, a Chokonen Chiricahua leader, to a meeting and accused his people of taking a boy from a ranch. Cochise denied it, escaped from the tent where the meeting was held, and the situation ended with hostages taken on both sides and several of them killed. Historians often point to this episode as a turning point in relations between Chiricahua communities and the United States, though they also note that earlier tensions existed and that the exact sequence of events is told differently in different sources.
The Battle of 1862
In July 1862, a column of volunteer soldiers marching east from California approached the pass and came under fire from Chiricahua and Warm Springs Apache fighters, among them Cochise and Mangas Coloradas. The soldiers used light artillery, and the fighting is generally dated to mid-July. The army’s reaction was to establish a military post to control the spring and the road.
Building and Rebuilding Fort Bowie
Fort Bowie was established in July 1862 and named for the commander of the California Volunteers regiment who was in the region at the time. The first post was a modest collection of temporary structures near the pass. In 1868 a larger, more permanent fort was built on a nearby rise, and its adobe walls are the ruins visitors see today.
From the fort, soldiers patrolled the surrounding country and supported operations during the long conflict that is often summarized in the Apache Wars chronology. The post was a staging point during the campaigns of the 1880s, including the pursuit of Geronimo’s group. After the Chiricahua surrender in 1886, many Chiricahua people, including those who had served the army as scouts, were sent east as prisoners. The story of the Chiricahua prisoners of war belongs to the same landscape, as the mountains around the pass were the people’s own home country.
By the 1890s the conflict that had brought the fort into being had ended, and the army abandoned the post in 1894.
The Place Today
The site is now Fort Bowie National Historic Site, a unit of the National Park Service, established in 1972. Visitors generally reach the ruins by a walking trail from a trailhead, a hike of roughly a mile and a half each way, though readers should check the park’s official website for current distances, hours, road conditions and any closures. Along the way there are remains of the stage station, a cemetery and the spring itself, and a small visitor center near the fort ruins offers exhibits.
Because the area is dry and exposed, visitors typically need water, sun protection and sturdy shoes, and summer afternoon thunderstorms can make dirt roads difficult.
Reading the Site Carefully
Most of the interpretation at military sites comes from army records, and those records reflect the soldiers’ point of view. Apache accounts and the experiences of Chiricahua families are part of the history as well. Fort Bowie was also associated with the Apache scout history of the 1880s, in which Apache men served in the army against other Apache groups, a subject on which historians and Apache communities hold complicated views.
Chiricahua descendants live today in several places, including with the Fort Sill Apache Tribe in Oklahoma and the Mescalero Apache Tribe in New Mexico. The pass remains an important place in their history, and the national historic site is a public place where anyone can learn about it, though it does not speak for any Apache nation. Visitors should treat the ground with care, leave artifacts where they lie, and stay on the marked trail.