Fort Breckenridge (Old Camp Grant) Arizona
Coordinates: 32°50′29″N 110°42′40″W / 32.841442°N 110.711076°W
Camp Grant was the name used from 1866 to 1872 for the United States military post at the confluence of the San Pedro River and Aravaipa Creek in the Arizona Territory. It is near the site of the Camp Grant massacre.
The post was first constructed in 1860, and between 1860 and 1873, the post was abandoned or destroyed and then rebuilt multiple times, and it was known by a variety of names, starting with Fort Breckinridge in 1860 before becoming Camp Grant in 1866. In 1872 The "old" Camp Grant on the San Pedro River (located in present day Pinal County) was replaced by a "new" Fort Grant at the base of Mount Graham (in present day Graham County). Little evidence of "old" Camp Grant (formerly Fort Breckinridge) is visible today.
In 1859, the time of the decision to found the military post on the San Pedro River at the mouth of Aravaipa Creek, the site was uniquely situated to command important avenues of then current Indian travel. This location commanded the intersection of four important routes. To the south, the San Pedro Valley stretched away into Sonora, and gave access to Mexico; this route was a vast natural highway for Apache raids into Mexico. To the west running up the Camp Grant Wash a road/trail extended over a divide toward the Santa Cruz River Valley and Tucson. To the north, only 10 miles down the valley, lay the Gila River and along it the Kearny Expedition trail extended from the Rio Grande to California. The post was placed to block the fourth route to the east, the Arivaipa Canyon connection to the San Pedro Valley. Aravaipa Creek cuts a narrow canyon completely through the Galiuro Mountains, affording a short cut access between the San Pedro Valley and the Upper Gila and the Sulphur Spring Valley. Because Arivaipa canyon cut through a mountain range and because it had wood and water all along its length, it was a much used east-west Apache travel route.
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