Dragoon Mountains of southeastern Arizona are named, not for the resemblance of this ridge to the back of a Dragon, but for a type of soldier trained for horseback riding and infantry. These were the U.S. troops sent to “pacify” the Chiricahua Apache homeland.
Understanding location lighting is a matter of experience and luck.
Cochise Stronghold campsites are on the eastern slope of the Dragoons, sheltering them from the late afternoon sun.
One this day in April I explored the trails until sunset and was lucky enough to be setup for the 14 minutes of that day when the light was absolutely perfect.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Understanding location lighting is a matter of experience and luck.
Cochise Stronghold campsites are on the eastern slope of the Dragoons, sheltering them from the late afternoon sun.
One this day in April I explored the trails until sunset and was lucky enough to be setup for the 14 minutes of that day when the light was absolutely perfect.
“Dragoon Spires in Afternoon Light”
These photographs are from two days spent at Cochise Stronghold, a part of the U.S. Forest Service Coronado Forest managed by Arizona State Parks located off the Interstate 10 East of Tucson between Benson and Wilcox.
This rugged natural fortress was, for some 15 years, the home and base of operations for the famed Chiricahua Apache Chief, Cochise. Cochise and about 1,000 of his followers, of whom some 250 were warriors, located here.
Born in present-day Arizona, Cochise led the Chiricahua band of the Apache tribe during a period of violent social upheaval. In 1850, the United States took control over the territory that today comprises Arizona and New Mexico. Not hostile to the whites at first, he kept peace with the Anglo-Americans until 1861, when he became their implacable foe because of the blunder of a young U.S. Army officer, Lt. George Bascom. In that year, Cochise and several of his relatives had gone to an encampment of soldiers in order to deny the accusation that they had abducted a child from a ranch. The boy was later proved to have been kidnapped by another band of Apaches.
During the parley, Cochise and his followers were ordered held as hostages by Bascom, but Cochise managed to escape almost immediately by cutting a hole in a tent. Bascom later ordered the other Apache hostages hanged, and the embittered Cochise joined forces with Mangas Coloradas, his father-in-law, in a guerrilla struggle against the American army and settlers. The capture and murder of Mangas Coloradas in 1863 left Cochise as the Apache war chief. The U.S. Army captured him in 1871 and prepared to transfer the Chiricahua to a reservation hundreds of miles away, but he escaped again and renewed the resistance campaign. The following year after negotiating a new treaty with the help of Thomas Jeffords, the band was allowed to stay in their homeland.
Cochise is reputed to have been a master strategist and leader who was never conquered in battle. He died peacefully on the newly formed Chiricahua reservation in 1874. His son, Taza succeeded him as chief. Upon his death, he was secretly buried somewhere in or near his impregnable fortress. The exact location has never been revealed or determined.
The town of Cochise, Cochise County, the renowned geological feature known as Cochise’s Head in the Chiricahua Mountains, and the Stronghold are all named in tribute to him.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
These photographs are from two days spent at Cochise Stronghold, a part of the U.S. Forest Service Coronado Forest managed by Arizona State Parks located off the Interstate 10 East of Tucson between Benson and Wilcox.
Here is the Cochise Stronghold information sign from the Douglas Ranger District of the Coronado National Forest.
The Dragoon Mountains are a low range that barely rises above the surrounding desert floor. Nevertheless, the granite boulders are spectacular and well worth visiting for the scenery alone. This mountain range is remote from cities or even any large towns, so visitation is light. Late fall, winter, and early spring are the best times to visit. Temperatures exceeding 100 degrees are common even in spring and fall. Cochise Stronghold Campground is closed in June, July, and August due to the often-extreme heat.
Safety First: Heat and low humidity are real hazards for people unfamiliar with desert climates. A person can loose up to 5 quarts of fluid a day and it is easy to become seriously dehydrated without realizing it, so drink plenty of fluids even if you do not feel very thirsty. Always carry extra water in your car. When going on a hike, even if a short one, take a day pack with water, snack foods, protective clothing, flashlight, first aid kit, compass, and map. To avoid sun in
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A large Fremont’s Cottonwood Offers shade and protection along the Pima Canyon Trail.
In the shade, a grapevine, offers a vain promise of grapes.
The cottonwood’s deep roots draw water from a mountain stream.
Native Americans in the Western United States and Mexico used parts of Frémont’s cottonwood variously for a medicine, in basket weaving, for tool making, and for musical instruments. The inner bark of Frémont’s cottonwood contains vitamin C and was chewed as an antiscorbutic – treatment for vitamin C deficiency. The bark and leaves could be used to make poultices to reduce inflammation or to treat wounds.
The Pima people of southern Arizona and northern Mexico lived along Sonoran Desert watercourses and used twigs from the tree in the fine and intricate baskets they wove. The Cahuilla people of southern California used the tree’s wood for tool making, the Pueblo peoples for drums, and the Lower Colorado River Quechan people in ritual cremations. The Hopi of Northeastern Arizona carve the root of the cottonwood to create kachina dolls.
Reaching Reavis Falls, once you find the canyon mouth, is three-fourths of a mile of boulder hopping and bushwacking over and around landslides, deep pools and fallen trees. Odds are you will be the only person in the canyon for weeks, if not months. Expect to be surprised. In this chapter you will (finally) visit the falls themselves.
A Camp in the Canyon
Click me for the chapter about the environment around the mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls.
The Last Mile
Here is an overview of the last third mile of Reavis Canyon. You can see the wall of the falls nestled in the folds of ridges towards the top, just off center.
On the lower right is a large landslide and, below there, it is complete chaos.
The vegetation grows shoulder to shoulder with interleaved branches. You will not get through there. The solution is to find a way around, usually over and around house-sized boulders.
The image was captured from Google Earth
After almost two hours of picking my way, there was a flicker of light. The fall waters were sparkling in the sunlight high above the cottonwood trees, in full Mach bloom, and the still leafless Arizona Sycamores.
This was my view of Reavis Falls from the canyon on a March day before the Arizona Sycamores have leaved. The falls are the tiny patch of white to the left of midline where the earth meets the sky. Jumbles of infallen boulders and thick growth of sycamores, oaks and fully leaved cottonwoods cloak the falls.
Another 30 minutes of canyoneering brought me to the foot of the falls.
At the Foot of Reavis Falls
Looking up at Reavis Falls from a 20 foot tall mound of talus.
These are boulders washed down at flood time.
The rock wall is thick with microorganisms, fungi and mosses.
After clambering around the talus pile I found this angle….
An Arizona Sycamore, before the spring leafing, at the Foot of Reavis Falls
Talus at the Foot of Reavis Falls
The Reavis Falls talus is large boulders carried down Reavis Creek and washed over the falls at flood time as well as blocks fractured from the cliff face. You can see the base of the Sycamore from the previous photograph.
The falls are formed where Reavis Creek flows over a solid mass of rock. The talus is composed mostly of this red rock. From the edge of this cliff to the base, where the falls hit the canyon floor, is all of 140 feet. This is a far as you can proceed into the canyon without some serious climbing skills.
It is possible to climb around the canyon by climbing up the ridge from which I captured the Cedar Basin Hoodoos. See my posts below for this location (you need to work it our for yourself).
This is NOT the last post of the series. From here I will focus on the beauty of Reavis Falls and the canyon that holds them.
It was a four-day expedition so there are a few chapters covering the approach to the Falls:
The Superstition Wilderness was born from volcanic eruption and in some places (Peters Mesa) the earth still rumbles.
Here in Reavis Canyon it is the huge spring runoff that builds the environment, grinding and scouring the canyon. In my chapter The Mouth of Reavis Canyon is the story of this aspect of the canyon.
The history of this spot is written on these volcanic and igneous rocks and boulders, the uprooted tree roots and fresh water.
The tire must have washed down from Reavis Ranch.
A Canyon of Wonder and Beauty
In this chapter I present, in the header, the lovely dawn sky of that day, and a tiny corner of a rock jumble in Reavis Creek. There is a large format version of the sky in my previous post, “The Mouth of Reavis Canyon.”
Rivulets and Rocks
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Here is the same view, in daylight. As I hiked toward the canyon mouth below Reavis Falls, looking up I saw this prominant cliff against the sky.
Here is the path I took toward the falls. The campsite is to the lower right, the falls are toward the center and left. My approach to the camp is on the right, moving toward the top. For another view of this location see Reavis Canyon Camp.
The mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls is choked with vegetation and infallen rocks and boulders. The far slopes are thick with the poles of young saguaros. There are hoodoos, as well. In the photograph, below, one hoodoo is catching morning light. See the chapters Hoodoos on the Descent to Reavis Falls and Cedar Basin Hoodoos for more views of the hoodoos around Reavis Falls.
Hoodoos visible from the mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls. Look toward the far slope.
Flood damage in Reavis Canyon below the falls. Note the scouring at the base of these trees and the broken limbs. This is NOT a place to be in spring thaw.
Massive spring flooding scours the canyon floor.
Flood damage in Reavis Canyon below the falls.
There is beauty to be found, as well. Freshly fallen rough rocks contrast with water smoothed boulders and the water surface.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Two Bar Mountain is only part of this view taken the evening of Day Three, my solo expedition to Reavis Falls in the Superstition Wilderness of Arizona.
The view encompasses most of the four day expedition, being the climb into the lower Reavis Creek Canyon from which I camped. I spent one entire day walking up the valley to the falls.
The patches of yellow on the far slopes to the left and into Reavis Valley are Mexican Poppy (Eschscholtzia californica) blooms.
To find lower Reavis Creek Canyon, look for the prominent cliff formation in the very center of the image. Follow the end of the cliff down to a dark shadow. The western canyon wall creates the heavy shadow. As you move to the right, in the image, the shadow becomes wider because the canyon wall becomes higher.
The view also encompasses a 2005 solo expedition over Two Bar Mountain using the Tule and Two Bar Ridge trails into the Superstition Wilderness around Pine Creek. See my blog “Racing the Sun” for an image Two Bar Mountain with the path of (most of) two days of that expedition.
An interesting feature of the full size image (lost in the small-scale reproduction of this blog) is the host of enormous saguaro cactuses marching up the sides of the canyon to the left, thinning out and ending on the western walls of the canyon (the slope directly beneath my viewpoint). Our course, each cactus is perfectly still, casting a huge shadow, and seems very tiny. The nearest is a mile away. We are seeing in this thinning host the lower Sonoran in transition to the upper Sonoran life zone.
All of this in one view from Lime Mountain. Here is another, taken just as the sun set.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
This photograph from the bottom of the Torr Road hill takes in Coolranny Townland. a slice of land running from the ridge to Loughan Bay. We see a number of hawthorne trees in flower, yellow flowering Whin Bush, houses and the Roman Catholic church Saint Mary’s Star of the Sea.
Tor in Irish is a steep rocky height. Likewise, Corr means odd, uneven, rounder, convex, curved, peaked, projecting, smooth. Combined Torcorr is the townland where we stopped on the Torr Road, halted by our wonder at this sight. In the distance, Torr Head projects into North Channel, the closest land to Scotland. Following the coast, the cliffs in front of Torr Head is home to numerous sea birds. The curved bay is named Loughan, the rocky sand beach are ruins of cottages emptied by Irish emigration. The white building is Saint Mary’s Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church. County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
View of Coolranny townland with Saint Mary’s Star of the Sean Roman Catholic Church from Torcorr townland, Torr Road . County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
The photograph of the header, taken by Pam, is from either Coolranny or Loughan Townland, looking across a sheep pasture, the North Channel of the Irish Sea toward the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland just twelve miles distant.
Here is a slideshow of this post’s images. To visit from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Tor in Irish is a steep rocky height. Likewise, Corr means odd, uneven, rounder, convex, curved, peaked, projecting, smooth. Combined Torcorr is the townland where we stopped on the Torr Road, halted by our wonder at this sight. In the distance, Torr Head projects into North Channel, the closest land to Scotland. Following the coast, the cliffs in front of Torr Head is home to numerous sea birds. The curved bay is named Loughan, the rocky sand beach are ruins of cottages emptied by Irish emigration. The white building is Saint Mary’s Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church. County Antrim, Northern Ireland.View of Coolranny townland with Saint Mary’s Star of the Sean Roman Catholic Church from Torcorr townland, Torr Road . County Antrim, Northern Ireland.On the way to Torr Head we stopped at this spot in Coolranny Townland to take in this view of the Irish Sea. The land overlooks Loughan Bay toward the Mull of Kintyre and Sanda Island, Scotland. County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
