On the morning of 27 March, 1873, a group of soldiers and Apache Scouts under the command of Captain George M. Randall and as part of GEN George Crook's Tonto Basin Campaign attacked an Apache rancheria on the slope of Turret Peak (then Turret Mountain). The Indians lost 57 killed. The battle broke the back of Yavapai and Apache resistance in central Arizona.
113 years later my then brother-in-law Mike Fox along with my West Point classmate Bruce Neese and I climbed the slopes of the mountain in an effort to find signs of the battle. We found nothing.
Years later the Parks Service at Camp Verde displayed artifacts from the battle. It was then that I discovered that the actual fight took place on the slope of the mountain and not on top as I'd earlier thought.
These pictures are scans of photographs taken with a point-n-shoot camera back then. I apologize for their quality.
