Fort Bowie Ride

Geronimo and his warriors at Bowie station awaiting their journey into exile 124 years ago.

Yesterday we made our annual pilgrimage to the Fort Bowie National Historic Site to pay homage to the end of the Indian Wars and to the soldiers who died fighting it. We always make the trip on Labor Day weekend which is also the anniversary of the surrender of Geronimo. Since B Troop memorializes the unit that pursued Geronimo until his surrender and then protected him from the law enforcement entities that wanted to hang him, we have made it part of our tradition to remember the day.

We started out at the trail head where the new Apache Pass road crosses the old Butterfield Stage route near the west end of the pass. The starting point of our ride is not far from the scene of the wagon train massacre that occurred during the infamous "Bascom Affair". The trail is rugged and it is hard to imagine a stagecoach rumbling through at night up and down steep gullies and ridges. The Chiricahua Mountains have not seen as much rain as the Huachuca Mountains this year and I was relieved to see that there was not heavy undergrowth along the trail. The pass is very beautiful, nevertheless, and I never tire of making this particular ride.

When we arrived at the Fort Bowie cemetery, there was a small crowd of people waiting for us. The Troop Executive Officer, who was filling in for the commander, read the historical account of the site and then read aloud the names of all the soldiers who were once buried there (some are still there). After he finished a team of four troopers fired three volleys in their honor and then our bugler played taps. The sounds of the rifles and bugle reverberated off the canyon walls and added poignancy to our little annual ceremony.

We continued up the trail to the old fort ruins, passing the first Fort Bowie ruins on the way. Below the ruins we passed through Apache Springs which is still producing a trickle of water through the steep canyon, heavily wooded and cool. Emerging from the canyon, we saw the fort ruins and the little museum building where our cook awaited us with lunch.

After arriving at the museum we first tended to the horses first as required by the cavalryman's creed. After dismounting we removed their bridles, loosened their cinches, checked their legs for cactus spines and injuries, and then watered them.

About then, some tourists arrived and we posed for photos, answered questions, and discussed cavalry history with them. Most people who come to Fort Bowie on the day of our annual ceremony don't know in advance that we are going to be there. They are always delighted and really seem to get a lot out of it. We do the ceremony mostly for ourselves and in keeping with our mission to keep the cavalry history alive but it is always nice that a few people get so much out of it.

After a great lunch, we mounted up again and headed back down through the canyon to our waiting trucks and trailers in Apache Pass. The Fort Bowie trip is a long day of hard work but it is one of our favorite events. We've doing it for eight years now and hopefully for many more years to come.