MILITARY HISTORY

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, ARIZONA'S MILITARY FORTS MOJAVE, VERDE, AND MCDOWELL CLOSED, ENDING AN ERA AFTER FINAL RETREAT

Few states can match Arizona's military heritage. The territory served as home to more than 65 military posts. Some garrisons kept transportation routes open. Forts Yuma and Bowie, for example, protected the west and east ends, respectively, of Arizona's life-sustaining overland road. Other posts, such as forts Whipple near Prescott and Lowell at Tucson, guarded towns. Fort Apache and Camp Reno were examples of military outposts established in wilderness areas to combat Arizona's warlike Indian bands. This year Arizona observes a milestone. It was a century ago that three Army posts, Mojave, Verde, and McDowell, were ordered deactivated. By 1890 most of the territory's roads had become secure, key towns were developing, and the Indians had been confined to reservations. It would be difficult to find three more diverse Arizona forts than Mojave, Verde, and McDowell, termed "camps" from 1867 to 1879. Each garrison was established for a different purpose, yet each encouraged settlement and had a profound impact on the state's development.Assignment to Arizona was anything but pleasant. Following the Civil War, many officers were shocked by the primitive living conditions in Arizona, and some resigned their commissions rather than serve in the territory. Indians were threatening attack constantly. Letters from home and San Francisco newspapers, if they came at all, were months late, and social activities were few. "We have nothing to write about here except ourselves," Major Andrew J. Alexander, Eighth U.S. Cavalry, informed his brother-in-law, Lt. Col. Emory Upton of the 25th Infantry, in 1868. "The Indians are very bad, so much so that I do not dare to ride out of sight of the Post with my wife and never mount my horse without belting on a pair of pistols." Nearly all of Arizona's territorial forts consisted of wall-less "communities" built around a central parade ground. Buildings were almost always made of adobe brick. Some early posts lacked functioning windows and doors; the rough openings were covered with canvas or used cloth, allowing such unwanted guests as rattlesnakes and stray dogs to enter.

Because many buildings were erected in haste, and, because proper adobe construction techniques were not always followed, roofs often leaked. This might not have been critical, except that roofs were sometimes sealed with horse manure. One officer noted that during Arizona's seasonal monsoons the building's occupants moved outside where, although it was wet, at least the smell was better. Fort Mojave, set on a sandy bluff a few yards from the Colorado River, 60 miles north of the Bill Williams confluence, was established during April, 1859. Martha Summerhayes, whose husband, Jack, served as an officer in the Army Quarter-master's Department, accompanied her husband to Arizona in the late 1870s. In her classic 1908 book, Vanished Arizona, she describes Fort Mojave's surroundings