Fort Bowie? Where's that?!

The easy answer is "Arizona". More specifically Fort Bowie is a desolate piece of land which the US Cavalry took from the Chiricahua Apache in the early days of the Civil War because they wanted to suppress the Apache in the Apache Pass area and they wanted an edge against the Confederate Army who had already taken Arizona and made it a confederate state. And also because there was water there.

While the site of the fort is desolate, the view along the trail back toward the Willcox basin is nothing short of spectacular. This photo (from the National Archives) was taken before monsoons started- probably spring time. I'm writing this mid-September which is toward the end of monsoons. Right now the green is overwhelming. One of those 'you had to be there' kind of things.

View from the site of Fort Bowie National Historic Site looking North (thank you National Archives!).
Well... sort of North. It's located in what is today named Dos Cabezas Mountains. This shot is looking roughly in the direction of the town of Bowie (off I-10) or more prominently and a little further West the town of Willcox.

 

I jumped to the conclusion that the fort was named after America's favorite pioneer and slave trader James/Jim Bowie. Not the case. That Bowie had died at the Alamo in 1836 but Ft. Bowie came along in about 1862, roughly 2 years into the US Civil War. 

The fort's name is actually a tribute to it's builder (I wonder if he decided this for himself?) and first commander, then-Colonel George Washington Bowie. Bowie was later promoted to Brigadier General. Col. Bowie led a detachment of volunteer infantry from California into Apache Pass and they staked out the site (which had water!) and built the fort.

General George Washington Bowie, responsible for building and initial command of Ft Bowie. He tried in later life to be a politician but no joy.

 

In the early 1860s the Confederates had control of Arizona and the North wanted to claim it. So part of the backroom deal they worked out made California & Nevada states even though the resident population of Nevada, for instance, was all of 7,000 people. According to a 1948 publication of Ripley's Believe It Or Not there were more wild horses in Nevada than there were people in that year! But the Union wanted all that gold & silver they'd discovered in Nevada & California so it was an easy-peasey path to statehood. Arizona didn't fare as well as the most valued minerals in that state weren't financially viable till well after the Civil War.

Chiricahua Apaches were making it hard for the Union to do the land grab (an understatement!), so the Army decided to build a fortification at Apache Pass which was central to the Apache Wars. The chief of the Chiricahua at the time was Cochise (yeah, that Cochise; and namesake of Cochise County, home of Benson, Arizona where we live). 

Cochise, chief of the Chiricahua Apache.

 

Decades later Hollywood came along and created the 1950 movie Broken Arrow. It starred Jeff Chandler as Cochise and James Stewart as the principal character Tom Jeffords; and Debra Paget played the love interest of Stewart/Jeffords. It was about Cochise leading the Chiricahua and the double dealing and bigotry of the time. I need to watch that again to see how they did representing Cochise and the Chiricahua- my memory is inclined to recall a very biased story but reading the story-line on Wikipedia it sounded better than I recalled. Apparently the movie is based upon the true story of Tom Jeffords' interaction with Cochise.

 

By1886 chief Geronimo was leading the Chiricahua. Pressure upon the Chiricahua had increased to the point Geronimo surrendered and the fort's days were numbered. The Chiricahua were banished from Arizona and transplanted to Florida & Alabama. By 1894 Fort Bowie was left to be devoured by the desert and be forgotten.

Current day remnants of the low walls of the fort- they've been plastered to stop erosion of the adobe.

Fort Bowie today- remainder of adobe walls have been plastered to stop the erosion.

The original site of Fort Bowie about 1880

This is the relocated Fort Bowie about 1893- the photo taken not long before the fort was abandoned. The empty rectangular space to the right of the main facility is the original location (above)- about 500 yards away.

And I got a few shots of my own as we wound our way thru the dirt roads that populate much if this part of Arizona...

Start of the trail to the Fort Bowie site. Sorry- Mrs. Bowman's little boy doesn't do rocky trails anymore.

This is one of the straight parts of 'Pipeline Road'; for most of it I was too busy hanging on to the wheel to get a shot!

The settlement of Dos Cabezas. I wanted a shot from the east side of the settlement but there was no place to pull the RV off the road! Had I been able to do that you would see the small homes built among the very green brush (good monsoons this year!)

I have to confess I was a fan of Jeff Chandler. On my first liberty after boot camp we went to Los Angeles (I forget where but near downtown). A film crew was using the ball room of I think the Biltmore Hotel to film something for a movie about the south (think Dixie; yeah I'm guessing but women's costumes were long gowns and the music was waltz time). Jeff Chandler was in the movie and had a dressing room off the lobby which left him with glass walls. He spotted a half dozen Marines in uniform and waved at us to 'come on in!' We were all too chicken to deal with security at the hotel door to take him up on it but the gesture of inclusion was very appreciated. That was in early 1957; 4 years later he was dead after a botched surgery on his back (they severed an artery; then he got an infection from one of the 70-some odd pints of blood). The surgery was to treat a back injury which occurred while on location in the Philippines.

Oh yeah- here's beautiful downtown Bowie, Arizona: