Apache Pass
Ground Zero for the American Myth
Monday, April 20th, 2026: 2026 Trips, Apache Pass, Chiricahuas, Hikes, Indigenous Cultures, Regions, Road Trips, Sky Islands, Society, Southeast Arizona.
I was on my way to Tucson and had another opportunity to explore enroute. This time it would be an area with rock outcrops that had caught my eye during 20 years of driving the interstate highway west. I’d studied it on the map and searched online – at the foot of the rock outcrops is a BLM picnic area used by the RV and motorcycle-touring crowds, and past it is a canyon used by peakbaggers to reach the distinctive pyramidal summit above. The RVers and bikers claim that the picnic area is overrun by cattle, so my expectations were low.
My weather app was full of hysterical high wind warnings for the area, predicting dust storms that might shut down the interstate. Temperatures were forecast to be warm, but the sky was gray with nearly continuous cloud cover as I drove west, fighting the steering wheel to keep my high-profile vehicle from swerving off the road or bashing into big rigs.
Unsurprisingly, the rock outcrops turned out to be white granite, very similar to the area where I first fell in love with the Mojave Desert. And most of the clearings around the picnic area were anchored by huge RVs or fifth-wheel trailers, so I kept driving past into the canyon. I never saw a human soul – they were all huddling indoors, out of the wind.
Past the picnic area, the graded gravel road became a very rough 4wd track, and I immediately braked next to two bulls fighting in the roadside brush. Beasts right out of Greek mythology, muscles bulging, back legs braced, heads locked together, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Only one seemed to have horns, but they both looked deadly serious, completely ignoring me as I frantically shifted out of gear, yanked the emergency brake, and fumbled with my camera. Meanwhile they were constantly moving, shuffling around through the brush and dust, pulling apart, bashing together repeatedly. I thought I got at least one good shot, but I was wrong, and they had moved out of sight, so I continued into the valley, unnerved. I’ve seen a lot of bulls and have been chased and even charged, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen them fighting – not a pleasant sight.
The rocky track led to an impressive ranch compound, but just before the gate was my turnoff – what the map shows as a dead-end valley road, from which a foot trail continues up toward the peak. This road turned out to be much worse, running into and up a creekbed consisting of flood debris that required most of my high ground clearance.
I drove about a mile and a quarter, encountering cattle the whole distance and literally using my bumper to shove groups of them out of my way several times, before I reached the end at a corral and water tank. It was a beautiful valley but teeming with cattle – I could see them grazing across the slopes above, and a cow nonchalantly emerged from the brush for a drink at the tank next to me as I was shooting pics.
I was ready for lunch, but had no desire to linger in this trashy clearing, so I drove back to the granite outcrops. The similarity to the Mojave was inspiring and I really wanted to hike, but my foot condition refuses to heal and there was no way I was going to go clambering over boulders.
Plan B was to drive to the historical preserve nearby and walk a short valley trail. The trailhead lies on a locally famous, badly washboarded gravel road over a legendary pass that I’d driven a couple times during recent years. The valley is beautiful, but the easy-sounding trail had never interested me until I ended up in my current diminished state.
There were a couple of city vehicles already parked at the trailhead. Wildflowers were starting to take off at this elevation, and the Park Service had provided regular kiosks featuring historic sites, so I went slowly. All I knew in advance was that the pass above was used by pioneer settlers, stagecoaches, and the “pony express”, and further into the valley lay the ruins of a 19th century fort. Not my usual cup of tea.
With every step, I was conscious of my injured foot, focusing on using my toes to keep pressure off the metatarsal, so it was never an easy hike, and it was often hard to appreciate what was around me. The trail meandered up and down and around shallow arroyos and low rises, and at one point I spotted a couple of young women ahead. I saw them again later, leaving a fenced enclosure that turned out to be a cemetery.
A sign explained that military graves had been moved away at some point, leaving only civilian remains, which include three Apache toddlers – one, the son of Geronimo. The implication being that this cemetery is of lesser historical interest with the removal of the soldiers’ bodies.
In this beautiful valley, under this spooky dark sky, having recently seen my mother die in front of me, and now fenced in among graves of peaceful people who had apparently died in acts of violence as mortal enemies – some of them too young, and all of them too traumatized to really understand what was happening to them – I felt like some castoff pilgrim sidetracked into a land of death, ruin, and ghosts. Which is exactly where I was.
From there, the trail led to the site of the famous “battle” – in which a few Apaches tried to ambush the much better-armed soldiers and wisely ran off before suffering casualties. Past there, in a hollow, the Park Service had feebly reconstructed a native wickiup. Then the trail entered riparian forest and came to the spring which explained and bound everything together across deep time – a water source for natives, travelers, and warriors spanning thousands of years. I found myself just standing there, overwhelmed, unmoored in dreamtime, barely conscious for an indeterminate interlude.
Past the spring, the trail led upward toward the Visitor Center – a classic example of British colonial architecture whose antecedents litter Africa, India, and the South Pacific. I’m not complaining – with its elevated site, low profile and wraparound veranda, I immediately wanted to move in and live there.
It was both well-maintained and modest, and in the dirt yard below the veranda stood a water fountain where I tasted cold metallic well water immediately carrying me back to childhood and the hand pumps and cast-iron piping of family farms.
Inside, the black-and-white photos of long-dead soldiers, settlers, and Apaches were mostly too painful to look at. There were a few mannequins behind glass, the most evocative for me a beautiful young woman who could’ve represented a prostitute or an officer’s wife. I bought a book of Apache oral history from the Park Service lady and we exchanged a few platitudes, then the two young women arrived. I wanted to ask them how they’d found this place – it’s far, far off the beaten path and poorly publicized, the sort of destination that normally attracts only the most determined retirees. But I felt barely capable of rational speech.
Another party had arrived outside, a Latino family, and fortunately for me I found an alternate route back to the trailhead, by climbing the ridge behind the visitor center. It was one of the most beautiful trails imaginable – the blue sky was opening, and a few cumulus clouds were emerging out of the undifferentiated gray behind the peaks and ridges that formed our southern skyline.
I’d researched the bushwhack to those southern peaks, and this gave me a chance to study the approach from across the valley.
But more surprise waited on the descent from the west end of the ridge. There, the trail actually crosses a fault – you literally step across a discontinuity in bedrock from limestone to granite. The Park Service plaque explains how the different substrates support different habitats, and you stare at the radically different plants on each side of the crack, and if you’re me, you’re astounded.
I own part of a fault that is world-famous among geophysicists – it created the canyon through my desert land – so I’m familiar with discontinuities in bedrock and habitats. But the scale and elevation of this site enchanted me. Encountered on a trail, it was intimate – but high on a ridge, with a view down a long valley to a basin fading into haze dozens of miles away, you could see these rock structures echoed on all the surrounding hillsides.
As I continued off the ridge, the Park Service never stopped burdening me with colonial history. And every type of settler or traveler passing through here had brought their own complex baggage of culture and family, which seemed to swirl through my mind like a plague of ghosts.
To rejoin the main trail, I had to cross the big wash that drains the whole valley. I met a young man and we agreed it had become a beautiful day. I realized that without the apocalyptic wind forecast by the weather app, it would’ve been uncomfortably hot. Everything had turned out for the best – for us today, if not for the Apaches and the other folks in the cemetery.
It wasn’t until a half hour later, cresting another pass on the interstate highway, that I was finally able to relax, and realize I’d had a pretty amazing day. I’d started the day tense, battered emotionally and physically by that wind, struggling to protect my injured foot. The dark sky, giant RVs, fighting bulls and intimidating cattle, the melancholy cemetery, the stories of violence, suffering, and death, the crumbling ruins – the physical and cultural landscape had conspired to trouble and oppress me.
Later, as I began to sort out what I’d seen and learned, I realized that this place really is a sort of ground zero for the human myths and experiences of this country. As water source, battle site, military post, and essential transit point between east and west, this is a true pivot of history. We know that many of those 19th century soldiers, officers, and Indian agents were ambivalent toward their own mission and recognized the tragedy they were perpetrating. As a descendant of refugees driven out of Europe, I’m sure most of those travelers were first-or-second-generation European refugees who realized they were, in turn, helping to drive Native Americans out of their own homelands. The Park Service says nothing about that – the primary purpose of this site is to further glorify the military.
But to me, it’s a perfect opportunity to discover ourselves in the landscape.
