Travel Articles

The Mystery of Fort Bowie (excerpt)

There’s a certain incongruity in the silence.

Particularly when you know that a hundred years ago these hills were crawling with hundreds of troopers hunting down bands of Apache warriors.

But today, the gunfire and cursing, war whoops and moans are replaced by silence, broken only by the rustle of sparrows darting in and out of the scrub and my muffled footsteps, almost lost in the soft dirt trail and dewy grass.

Fort Bowie. The name alone conjures visions of forgotten times—times  when a fellow named Lincoln sat in the White House, and two others—Geronimo and Cochise—led the men in blue a merry chase around the Arizona desert.

Established barely a year after the Confederates moved into their new quarters at Fort Sumter, Fort Bowie was built in response to a fracas between Apaches, who didn’t much care for the prospectors, settlers and soldiers running around their county, not to mention a Union force sent to confront Johnny Reb in New Mexico and Arizona.