Page 231 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

Figure 58. Geronimo. Photo courtesy of the Museum of New Mexico, #2115.
with competent men from his own com- mand.
Miles established two divisions for the
network, Arizona and New Mexico. He
placed Second Lieutenant Alvarado
Meason Fuller in charge of Arizona’s 13
stations, and First Lieutenant Edward
Everett Dravo in command of the 14 sta-
tions in New Mexico. Their first duties
were to scout the military installations,
present and past, to determine high points
from which movement could be observed
and communicated to other stations in the
151 network.
Each station, depending on the natural security of the location and number of con- necting links, was manned by two or three operators with one to five guards. The size of the small detachments were considered safe because the men would be in locations relatively difficult to approach and they were to maintain water and rations suffi- cient to last 30 days in event of difficulties. The station established at Cooke’s Peak was able to communicate with similar in- stallations at Camp Henely, Deming, Lake Valley, and Hillsboro, and though Miles did not indicate it in his reports, another station was established at Dripping
1 Springs, in the San Andres Mountains.
This oversight may have been due to the fact that the other stations were in opera- tion by June; Dripping Springs was not established until November 19, 1886, long after Geronimo’s negotiated surrender in a
canyon on John Slaughter’s ranch.
The signal group at Cooke’s Peak was supported
by a strong backup force camped at abandoned Fort Cummings. From July through at least September, detachments from two cavalry companies main-
153
tained a garrison of approximately 100 men.
By May 1886 many of the installations were operable, and by June the network was essentially complete. To test the effectiveness of the system, a message was sent from one end of the line to the other, and then repeated back to the origin, a total distanceof800miles. The25-wordmessagecame
through ungarbled in 4 hours. This was the first of 2,264 messages that would be sent prior to Geronimo’s capitulation and the subsequent dis-
Miles decided to install a network of 27 heliograph stations (Figure 59) across southern Arizona and New Mexico. Miles was no stranger to the potential of a solar powered communication system. He had borrowed six instruments in 1878, when he was com- manding the District of the Yellowstone, to establish a line connecting Forts Keogh and Custer in Montana.
To implement the network covering the 200 by 300 mile area, Miles needed equipment and trained operators. Miles requested support from Brigadier General William Babcock Hazen, head of the Signal Corps, and received 34 heliographs, 30 binoculars, and 10 telescopes, but only 11 trained operators. Fortunately he was able to augment these specialists
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