Fort Verde

Fort Verde was Crook's headquarters for the Apache wars — the 1871 post on the Verde River where General George Crook ran the Tonto Basin campaigns, and where the officers' wives found bathtubs and silverware in the desert. Martha Summerhayes wrote that arriving at Verde felt like finally reaching civilization — which tells you what the rest of Arizona Territory was like.

The surrender happened on the commanding officer's porch — in 1873, Tonto Apache chief Chalipun brought 300 of his people to the front steps and surrendered to Crook, the moment that ended the Tonto war. Crook's scouts did the work — Alchesay and Chiquito won Medals of Honor tracking through the lava beds and canyons north of the fort, the Apache scouts finding the Apache holdouts the Army couldn't.

Only four buildings are left — the commanding officer's quarters where the surrender happened, the bachelor's quarters, the adjutant's office, and one more — but they're the best-preserved Indian Wars post in Arizona, the pise adobe walls that the monsoons kept cracking and the state kept fixing. The file keeps the fort's intactness: the porch where 300 people surrendered, the mansard roofs that were the territory's idea of elegance, and the four buildings that are all that remain of the post that ran the war.

Fort Verde is the archive's surrender file — Crook's headquarters where Chalipun's people surrendered on the commander's porch, the best-preserved Apache-wars post in Arizona, and the four buildings that are left of it.