Heliograph #328A

The Heliograph Trail #328A branches off the Arcadia Trail #328 about a mile from Shannon Campground and leads to the top of this historic peak. If you would rather not return by that same route, you can put together a loop by following the Arcadia and Heliograph trails to the summit then returning by way of the Heliograph Road, which is closed to public motor vehicles. A short trip along the Swift Trail (AZ 366) back to Shannon Campground completes this four-mile loop.

In 1886, one of the most innovative approaches General Nelson Miles enacted in the final campaign against the small band of Apaches led by Geronimo was a system of heliographs. Atop mountain peaks throughout southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico, signal officers and soldiers manned stations using mirrors, or heliographs, to flash coded messages to military camps beyond the reach of telegraphs. However, contrary to a number of published accounts, Heliograph Peak was not part of the 1886 Geromino campaign heliograph network. A few years after the Geronimo campaign, the US Army undertook testing of a much larger heliograph network, to evaluate the effectiveness of a heliograph communications system. In December of 1889, a party lead by Lt. Eggleston of the 10th Cavalry visited the prominent mountaintop that later became known as Heliograph Peak and found that was a good point to connect nearby Fort Grant, located 6 miles to the west and more than 5000 feet lower in elevation, with a heliograph station near Fort Bowie, more than 40 miles to the southeast. Within a few years the Army decided heliography was not going to be an effective means of communication and developed other methods. In the 1910s, the Forest Service explored the use of heliographs to communicate between different locations in the Pinaleno and Galiuro Mountains. In 1933, a 100-foot fire lookout tower was erected by the Civilian Conservation Corps and is still used by Forest Service personnel during peak fire season in early summer.

At a Glance