Cochise Stronghold

For roughly fifteen years, this rugged pass in the Dragoon Mountains — a natural fortress of granite domes and sheer cliffs — served as home base for Cochise and several hundred Chiricahua Apache during their long conflict with American settlers and the U.S. Army, from 1861 until a peace agreement was reached in 1872. Cochise died here in 1874 and is buried somewhere in the stronghold, in a location that was deliberately never recorded. Visitors and campers describe the sound of a flute playing among the boulders that ring the campsites, and some say Cochise's own figure can still be seen walking the hills — not guarding any treasure, as one popular but mistaken version of the story holds, but still watching for soldiers who never came again.