Bowie, Arizona, Apache Pass Gateway

Bowie sits at the mouth of Apache Pass, the narrow gap through the Dos Cabezas Mountains that was for decades one of the most strategically contested corridors in the Southwest. The Butterfield Overland Mail stages rolled through here starting in eighteen fifty-eight, relying on a spring inside the pass that was controlled by the Chiricahua Apache. The stop here was called Apache Pass Station, and tensions were constant.

Fort Bowie was established in the pass itself in eighteen sixty-two after the Battle of Apache Pass, where Cochise and Mangas Coloradas fought soldiers escorting California Column volunteers. The town of Bowie grew up at the railroad junction below the pass and was named for the army post above. Today it is a quiet unincorporated community, but Fort Bowie National Historic Site is a hike of about a mile and a half each way from a trailhead roughly twelve miles south of town.