Apache totem poles???

Yesterday we headed up an obscure dirt road on Roadrunner and Wile E (our electric bikes).  All we knew was that this road led to something called “Camp Geronimo."  On our maps it looked like there might be a campground nestled at the base of the Mogollon Rim in the Tonto National Forest.  

Cool!  We thought it might be a great place to take grandchildren camping, since this “campground” was in the mountains with forests, meadows, bubbling streams, and near the Arizona Trail—with lots of spectacular hiking.

This is what we found….. 

Yes, two magnificent totem poles!  Very strange, since totem poles were only made by indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast.  And here we were 1,400 miles away in forests in the southwest.  Why are there two beautifully carved and painted totem poles hidden deep in the Tonto National Forest?

At first we assumed the totem poles were there just for us to discover something beautiful and unusual….but no, Camp Geronimo is a Boy Scouts Camp.  

So as soon as we got home we immediately emailed Sean and Emily and asked them to “pretty please” send our Boy Scout grandsons, Soren and Sebastian, to Camp Geronimo next summer!  It’s only five miles from our cabin.  Do you think grandparents are allowed to be camp counselors?

 

The question still remains—why totem poles in the middle of the Tonto National Forest? And why would Geronimo be associated with the Tonto National Forest or totem poles? 

 

Geronimo was a Native American leader and respected medicine man of the Chiricahua Apache tribe.  He was born in the area of New Mexico in 1829.  Geronimo fought to keep his people on their tribal lands for almost thirty years.  He was the last American Indian warrior to formally surrender to the United States.  On September 4, 1886, the great Apache warrior, Geronimo, surrendered in Skeleton Canyon, Arizona. 

Even though Skeleton Canyon is in the middle of the desert 300 miles southwest of Camp Geronimo, this brave warrior, Geronimo, deserves to have a Boy Scouts Camp named after him in Arizona!  

But still…..totem poles?  

We’re very glad that these two totem poles have been misplaced deep in our mountain forest.  We love them, and plan to visit them often—hopefully with lots of grandchildren!