Theodore Roosevelt School

When the Army left in 1922, the fort found a second use as a weapon. In 1923 the Bureau of Indian Affairs opened the Theodore Roosevelt Indian Boarding School here, part of a national campaign to erase Native identity. The first children were Dine, hauled south from the Navajo Nation; by the 1930s most were Apache. The Park Service, naming it a landmark in 2012, put the mission plainly: assimilation and control. The school still runs today, but the White Mountain Apache administer it now.

What the plaque says

(118). . , On January 24, 1923 an act was passed by Congress authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to establish and maintain an Indian boarding school on the site of Fort Apache. The first students were Dine' (Navajo) children brought from the Navajo Reservation to the north. During the 1930's Ndee (Apache) children began to make up the majority of the student body. In 1960 public schools under the administration of the Arizona State Department of Education opened in Whiteriver, and most local children transferred to the new schools. T.R. School again housed a multi-tribal student body until the 1980's when the White Mountain Apache Tribe took administrative control of the school. This school building was built around 1932.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Apache Historic Park — steps away
  The Army fort that became a boarding school — and came back to the Apache
• Mount Baldy — 26 mi
  Dzil Ligai Si'an, the sacred White Mountain, and the summit you stop short of

More markers nearby

• First Commanding Officer's Quarters — steps away
• White Mountain Apache War Memorial — 3.4 mi
• Kinishba Ruins — 4.2 mi