Located about a mile and a half from the heart of Cave Creek, the Cave is the namesake for the historic town of Cave Creek, Arizona. It is the presumed location of an 1873 Christmas-day battle between the Tonto Apaches and the U. S. Cavalry. The Cave, which is approximately sixty-feet wide and fifty-feet high and deep, is the only cave which could accommodate eleven wickiup huts described by the Cavalry. After an early morning battle, nine Apaches lay dead, tons of winter-sustaining food smoldered, and the Cavalry’s relentless enforcement of “surrender or starve” was accomplished.
