This Is Apache Country — Then and Now — a stop on the Coronado Trail Scenic Byway.
Something to hold in mind as we drive: this is Apache land, and I mean that in the present tense.
The White Mountain Apache Tribe's Fort Apache Reservation lies west of this road, and the San Carlos Apache Tribe's land lies south and west of it. Both are sovereign nations, with their own governments, their own laws and their own economies, and both are very much here — not a chapter in a history book.
The forest you're driving through was Apache country long before it was a national forest, and much of what the maps call wilderness was somebody's home range: the meadows where the elk are, the springs, the mountain we call Escudilla. The names on the map are mostly the newcomers' names.
The nineteenth century here was brutal, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise — Boone will tell you about Geronimo later, and that story is genuinely one of the last chapters of the Apache wars. But the ending most people carry around, where the tribes disappear at the end of the chapter, is simply wrong.
If you want to visit properly, both tribes welcome visitors on their own terms, with their own permits and rules. Respect those, don't wander onto tribal land without one, and understand that some places are not for tourists. That's not unfriendliness. It's a nation setting its own boundaries.