Fort Bowie National Historic Site

Willcox serves as a starting point for your journey through the Magic Circle of Cochise. The road leads you to the ghost town of Dos Cabezas, as you head for Apache Pass and the Fort Bowie National Historic Site. This outpost marks the battles of the Indian Wars in the late 1880’s.

Fort Bowie commemorates in its 1000 acres, the story of the bitter conflict between the Chiricahua Apaches and the United States military. For more than 30 years Fort Bowie and Apache Pass were the focal point of military operations eventually culminating in the surrender of Geronimo in 1886 and the banishment of the Chiricahuas to Florida and Alabama. It was the site of the Bascom Affair, a wagon train massacre, and the battle of Apache Pass, where a large force of Chiricahua Apaches under Mangus Colorados and Cochise fought the California Volunteers. The remains of Fort Bowie today are carefully preserved, the adobe walls of various post buildings and the ruins of a Butterfield Stage Station. It stands as a lasting monument to the bravery and endurance of U.S. soldiers in paving the way for westward settlement and the taming of the western frontier. It also serves to give us an understanding of the “clash of cultures,” one a young emerging nation in pursuit of its “manifest destiny,” the other a valiant hunter/gatherer society fighting to preserve its existence. Apache resistance was finally crushed at Fort Bowie, and the result was the end of the Indian wars in the United States.