Fort Whipple

The Army established Fort Whipple in 1864 and made it headquarters for the Department of Arizona, the command center from which General George Crook directed his campaigns against the Yavapai and Tonto Apache. Those winter campaigns of the early 1870s broke Indigenous resistance in central Arizona and led directly to the 1875 forced march of some fifteen hundred Yavapai and Dilzhe'e people to San Carlos. The post was rebuilt in 1904, abandoned as a fort in 1913, and became a veterans' hospital in 1922, the role its grounds still serve today.

What the plaque says

A wooden stockade fort named for Lt. Amiel W. Whipple was established here May 18, 1864. Also known as Whipple Barracks and Prescott Barracks. The post was headquarters for the Department of Arizona beginning in 1870, and the center for campaigns against the Yavapai and Tonto Apache in the 1860s and 1870s. Whipple Quartermaster Depot, separate from Fort Whipple until 1879, was also located here. The post was discontinued in 1898, but regarrisoned in 1902. It was completely rebuilt in 1904, abandoned in 1913, and in 1922 became a hospital.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Prescott — 1.4 mi
  Arizona's first territorial capital — Whiskey Row, the courthouse square, and a mile-high pine town
• Jerome — 23 mi
  The billion-dollar copper camp clinging to Cleopatra Hill — now the largest ghost town in America
• Tuzigoot — 28 mi
  A hilltop Sinagua pueblo over the Verde, dug out of the ground in the Depression

More markers nearby

• Site of the O'Neill-Munds House — 0.9 mi
• Hassayampa Inn — 1.2 mi
• Site of the Territorial Courthouse — 1.3 mi
• Doc Holliday in Prescott — 1.3 mi