Here is the place the white settlers came to know as Cochise's Stronghold.  The Dragoons, a fairly short range of heavily wooded mountains, forms the western border of Sulphur Springs Valley, along with the Little Dragoons and other lesser ranges.
 
 

     There is magic in these mountains.  It is said that the spirit of Cochise dwells here more than anywhere else, and anyone who visits, if they are inclined at all to the Spiritual, cannot help but sense something special.

     It is known that Cochise is buried here, somewhere in the forboding and lonely crags, hidden from the world by an adoring People who both loved and feared him.  Here he lived out his natural life, having delivered his band from almost certain extinction by securing a "good peace" with the Americans (see Broken Arrow). 

     The actual Stronghold is not the spot currently developed as a camping and birding site, referred to on maps as "Cochise's Stronghold".  In fact, the historic Stronghold is on the undeveloped, nearly pristine west side of this range, where impossibly shaped boulders and towering, tortured pinnacles form natural defenses that proved next to impossible for the Americans to penetrate throughout "Cochise's War".  It was here, on the west side, that Cochise and General Howard came to a mutual agreement, and it was here that Cochise, through tact and prowess as a negotiator, managed to secure for his band most of the very homeland he'd always controlled, as the new Chiricahua Reservation.