Saturday, October 16, 2004

Fort fought Apaches, time

Fort Lowell was key in defeating Geronimo and his Apache raiders

SHERYL KORNMAN

Tucson Citizen

Though the ducks are quacking happily in the pond at Fort Lowell Park, the site is much more than a recreational greenscape.

It is also a preserve for a bit of history in a small state museum and in some crumbling adobe at 2900 N. Craycroft Road.

The ruins date back to 1873 when the U.S. Army posted cavalry there to defend Tucson from Apache raids.

The post was moved from its headquarters downtown to the outskirts of the city to keep the rowdy troops from disturbing the peace.

Near the park, historic homes with thick adobe walls house neighborhood residents, with modern townhomes to the west built to resemble the Spanish-flavored architecture of the time.

Each February, the history of the fort is celebrated in a living history event, La Reunión de El Fuerte.

Related story: Home is where the history is

Military re-enactors in period dress and musical entertainers provide a glimpse of what life was like for the troops.

The Old Fort Lowell Neighborhood Association holds its own annual event, a home tour showcasing the historic buildings west of Craycroft.

Efforts to maintain the area's historic roots continue.

The fort's old buildings are a branch museum of The Arizona Historical Society, overseen by historian David T. Faust, curator of the Fort Lowell Museum.

The museum's efforts to care for the historic aspects of the area were boosted in 2002, when the city voted to pay $1.3 million to a New Mexico couple for a 2.6-acre parcel at Fort Lowell and Craycroft that includes much of the 131-year-old fort's commissary and quartermaster building.

Those buildings are now apartments but the city and Arizona Historical Society plan to restore them.

The fort was established outside Tucson in 1873 after the Army decided its Camp Lowell should be moved from Tucson, where it had been since 1866, because its soldiers were rowdy and too close to prostitution and easy liquor.

During the 1880s, troops from the fort took part in the Geronimo campaigns, fighting Apaches and providing support as the major supply depot to other troops in the area.

The fort was abandoned in 1891, five years after the end of organized "hostilities" with the Apaches.

Mexican families farmed the area and sold their produce to downtown Chinese grocers.

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