Visiting the Chiricahua Regional Museum in Willcox, AZ

 Yesterday, March 12, I drove the CR-V to visit the nearby town of Willcox, AZ and the Chiricahua Regional Museum.  Pretty well curated museum, with some interesting new info for me.  

On a previous camping trip, I'd checked out the Chiricahua National Monument: LINK.

As usual, here's some of the stuff that caught my eye.  Plenty of other things at this museum of course.  From vintage tools and instruments, displays of drugstore items from back in the day, information, items and photos of Fort Bowie, and the piece de resistance: information and photo of famed Apache Chief: Geronimo.

Having just toured Apache Pass the day before, this illustration helped me visualize how things might have occurred, back in the day:

Some information on the town of Willcox and how it got its name.

Inset pic from above poster that I

found interesting.

The town's namesake.

A historical photo and a NPS depiction of Fort Bowie, which was established to support US Army operations against the Chiricahua Apache.

Geronimo

While on active duty with the US Army, I spent a collective year of my life going through schools at Fort Sill, OK.  The home of the Field Artillery.  

I didn't know this was part of the history of Fort Sill.  

Geronimo's name lived on as part of the history of the US Army's Airborne Infantry Regiments of WWII.  There was a poster with the history of the use of the name "Geronimo" by early paratroopers, to demonstrate they weren't scared while doing their parachute jumps.

They'd picked up the name after having watched an old movie featuring Geronimo you see, right before their first jump, and one of them declared he'd yell the name to show he wasn't afraid.

The yell was echoed by other paratroopers and even ended up on unit insignia:

I found it slightly ironic that Geronimo's name was taken up as a battle cry by US Army troops later on.  I guess they didn't go into the "history" of the name.  Or, perhaps, they were honoring a recognized warrior?

After the museum, I wandered about on foot nearby and spotted this other museum:

Rex Allen, the last of the Silver Screen Cowboys

I didn't go into the museum, sorry.

On a completely unrelated note, I spotted the rig from Deutschland:

Back at camp, I leisurely packed up the outside bits of the camp, listened to an audio book at the same time and checked out a rock I'd spotted before:

Here's the nearby rock pile, with the red arrow pointing to the rock in question:

Here's a closer look and you can probably surmise what caught my eye:

However, once I made my way around the rock, a better image surfaced as to what the rock looked like:

A cow's skull of course, what were you thinking?

I'll be displacing on Wednesday towards the BANWR: Buenos Aires National Wildlife Area.

Sunset turned out well: