Forting Up On the Apache Trail
From Tucson, Arizona, to Lawton, Oklahoma.
Categories: Renegade Roads
By: Johnny D. Boggs 05/01/2008
Ominous clouds threaten rain as I pull off Highway 80 near the Arizona-New Mexico border at the Skeleton Canyon monument. I debate whether or not I should drive to the actual site where the Apache Wars ended when Geronimo surrendered in 1886.
Louis Kraft’s story echoes through my head—no, I didn’t have a margarita at the Gadsden Hotel tavern in Douglas, Arizona. If you don’t know Louis Kraft, you should, because his book Gatewood & Geronimo is required reading to understand the Apache Wars. As an Apache Wars historian, Kraft ranks up there with Angie Debo and Edwin R. Sweeney. As a tourist, well, here’s his tale:
He’s traveling with his young daughter across southern Arizona, hell-bent on going to Skeleton Canyon and seeing the historic site, not just this rather ugly marker I’m staring at. So he drives into the hinterlands and comes to shallow water covering the road. (Being holier than thou, I, of course, know better than to drive across water in the West, but Louis lives in Los Angeles, and, well, he’s obsessed with Geronimo.) He tries it. Gets stuck. Gets stuck more. No cell phone signal out here, it’s a long walk to nowhere and there’s his daughter to think about. So Louis becomes superman; he grabs blankets, anything he can find (but not his daughter) to get traction for his wheels. Perhaps the ghosts of Apache warriors Lozen and Nana give him a push, but he makes it out of the bog and gives up on his quest. He’s bound for the hotel in a mud-splattered car that looks like it has been on an African safari for 10 years, and now he’s thinking, “Man, how cool is this? Wait till everyone sees my car!” But this is monsoon season; a thunderstorm blows in, and before Louis can show off his daring, his car is spic-and-span.
So there’s my dilemma: Skeleton Canyon or Lordsburg, New Mexico? Alas, I lack Louis’s daring (he would have made a great scout for Al Sieber—till he drowned in a flash flood), and coffee at Kranberry’s Family Restaurant in Lordsburg sounds inviting.
Besides, whenever I drive along I-10 to Lordsburg, I expect to see a stagecoach barreling across the Lordsburg playas, with the Ringo Kid’s Winchester dropping countless Apache warriors. Maybe this time I will.
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