BACK ROAD ADVENTURE

Dragoon Springs: So Much That Was Unimaginable Happened Here

The winter wind whistles through the lonesome ruins of the old Dragoon Springs mail station. Lonesome except for the ghosts that live here in remembrance of a longago time when men were what the frontier made of them: sometimes brave, sometimes horrible, often cruel.

Standing on a grassy bluff, I can't help but wonder what life must've been like here in 1858 I have come to the old stage station to remember the Southwest frontier. So much happened here, so much that was unimaginable.

Silas St. John, only 23 years old, was chief of the mail company's construction crew. On the night of September 8, 1858, he and his employees were asleep when three Mexican laborers attacked the Butterfield men in their bedrolls.

It happened upon the scene. Two of the Butterfield men were already dead, and a third died shortly thereafter.

But St. John, a man made courageous by the frontier, hung on. Less than a month later, the one-armed man climbed onto a horse under his own power and rode into Tucson. His amazing recovery was detailed in a medical journal. He lived 61 more years.road. Follow it two miles to the Forest Service sign, then go left another mile along a rocky but passable road that leads through a gate (close it behind you) to an explanatory historical marker. The stage station is at the end of a trail, a short distance behind the sign.

A square of unmortared rocks stacked one on top of another, the station rises to heights of three and four feet in places. In their original state, the walls were 10 feet high and fortlike. There are remnants of interior walls, too, and an opening where the building's single door used to be.

I step inside, perhaps on the very spot where St. John fought for his life. To my right, but still part of the main structure, is the stock corral. The threat of Apache raids was so great that horses and mules were kept inside at night.

The Dragoon Mountains, about a mile to the south, are split by a shadowy canyon that layers back into a dark draw. Through this passageway, Apaches came raiding. Cochise Stronghold is up there, the great chief's impenetrable hideout.

Below the bluff to the north is the tiny settlement of Dragoon, and beyond that lies Sulphur Springs Valley, broad and brown under a sky of magic blue.

Nothing in the station's location explains why it's still here when the others are gone. It's wide open to the elements and should've blown away decades ago. Maybe it hangs on because it has stories to tell.

After abandoning Tucson to the advancing Union troops from California, Capt. Sherod Hunter's column of Texas Confederates stopped here in May, 1862.

The stage station was deserted. Butterfield's southern route had closed after only three

when this site was a stop on the old Butterfield Overland Mail route.

Rattlesnakes, scorpions, dizzying heat, freezing January dawns, no medicine, low provisions, perilous nights with hostile Indians close by, only two visits a week by the muledrawn stage.

If the driver was in good holler, maybe he'd reach into the boot of his coach and fetch a bottle of sipping whiskey to help pass the night.

They used axes and a heavy stone sledgehammer. St. John suffered a blow that severed his left arm. He managed to scramble for his pistol and get off a shot that sent the attackers fleeing.

St. John endured three days of hell, lapsing in and out of consciousness, suffering tremendous pain, thirst, the threat of buzzards, and coyotes howling at the smell of blood.

A traveling reporter for the Memphis Avalanche newspaper Butterfield operated a string of stations in southern Arizona: Cienega, Ewells, Apache Pass, San Simon. But they've all vanished. Only this one at Dragoon Springs remains.

The survivor stands about 70 miles southeast of Tucson. Travel east on Interstate 10 to Exit 318 at Dragoon. The town itself is about two and a half miles away along a winding, well-marked road.

The first right after the rail road tracks is an unnamed dirt

years, a victim of the sectional differences that sparked the Civil War and the federal gov ernment's order to move the mail line to a central route across Union territory.

Sherod's men were besieged by a force of Chiricahua Apaches probably led by Cochise, himself. At least four Texans died in the fight, and their graves are still visible in the tall grass about 150 feet north of the station. Two are marked with headstones, but I could read only one: S. Ford, May 5, 1862.

The same thing happened to gold miner John Finkel Stone in 1869. He was traveling to Tucson from his mine near Fort Bowie with a load of gold when his coach was attacked not far from the station. Cochise again.

Stone, his driver, and an escort of four soldiers were killed, and their bodies were mutilated. His gold was never found.

Tucson's Weekly Arizonan described the condition of the coach when it was recovered: “The sides . . . are splintered and perforated from the action of lances and bullets, and in many places bespattered with blood.” So, it seems, is this pretty bluff. Some have even written that it's cursed, and who can say otherwise?

As the wind howls, I kick through the grass to have another visit with the Confederate dead. The weathered newspaper clipping I'm holding contains two small facts about Sam Ford: He was an ex-gold miner from New Mexico who signed on to fight with the Confederacy.

But if you think a moment, those aren't small facts at all. They speak volumes Ford was a believer, he took risks, he was a dreamer, he acted, he sought adventure. The frontier gave him everything he wanted and took it all away.

His grave is a mound of rocks and mesquite twigs. Someone told me that pack rats still bring up bits of his uniform. Can that be true, after all this time?

St. John's three men are supposed to be buried here somewhere in a common grave. I've walked quite a while without finding any sign of them. The frontier is letting them rest.

TIPS FOR TRAVELERS

Back road travel can be hazardous if you are not prepared for the unexpected. Whether traveling in the desert or in the high country, be aware of weather and road conditions and make sure you and your vehicle are in top shape and you have plenty of water. Don't travel alone, and let someone at home know where you're going and when you plan to return. Odometer readings in the story may vary by vehicle.