The Apache homeland encompassed the Byway corridor. Even today the pride Apaches feel in their old homeland and way of life is evident. Through their unique culture, a spiritual and respectful possession of their home territory; a nomadic lifestyle organized as bands and tribe; along with a hunting and gathering existence, strict social conduct and physical superiority, they once ruled an area that extended over five states and two nations.

Famous Apache leaders who called the Gila watershed home included Mangas Coloradas, Victorio, Geronimo, Loco, and Nana. Geronimo was born near the headwaters of the Gila River, possibly near the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Today the Apaches’ old heartland is reduced to the Gila National Forest; wild and uninhabited, not even by Apaches, it is about one hundred twenty miles long and one hundred wide. The fur trappers of the early 1800’s called it "starving country." To the Apaches this rugged area was a treasure of resources: timber, wildlife, waterways, grassy valleys and plains, minerals, and the open space they required for their nomadic lifestyle.

The Apache people take pride in the memory of the powerful and wise leaders who embodied the Apache way of life before it was ended by the arrival of Europeans. Mangas Coloradas, "Red Sleeves," of the Chihene or Red Paint people, was of enormous physical stature and a great leader. He raised large war parties to protect his people through the strategic marriages of his daughters into neighboring tribes, and kept these war parties well supplied. His home country was the Mogollon Mountains, the heart of the Gila Wilderness today. Like his successor, Victorio, he preferred life away from settled areas.

After Mangas Coloradas’ treacherous death (surrendered to Army and then "mysteriously" shot trying to escape), Victorio and his sister Lozen provided vital leadership. During Victorio’s War of 1879-1880, Victorio earned the highest respect of the U.S. Army officers he fought against for his tactical and strategic abilities as a guerrilla fighter. Victorio, and his band were ambushed by Mexican militia, where Victorio and many of his people were killed. Subsequently, most of the band was killed or sold into slavery in Mexico. The determined remainder, including Lozen, joined with Geronimo’s mixed Chiricahua band of Apaches and continued to defy two great nations. Lozen was a positive influence on her people, encouraging them with her deeds and abilities, among which was her power to detect the approach of the enemy. Apache culture provided for the acquisition of such gifts of power through dancing, fasting, and prayer. The Gan dancers, unique to the Apaches, wear masks and crowns and represent mountain spirits. These spirits protected the Apaches, guided their ceremonies, and brought them power.

By 1885 many Apaches had accepted life on the reservations. History remembers the Apaches who persisted in fighting the white man to the bitter end. Led by Geronimo, a group of about 35 Apaches evaded thousands of troops on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border in 1885-86. Inexhaustible, Geronimo might have gone on forever this way, but he and the members of his band missed their families on the San Carlos Reservation, and the promise of reunion at last persuaded them to surrender. However, they were not allowed to see their families and they were shipped in boxcars to captivity in Florida. Thus ended the years of Apache conflict on the southwestern frontier.