The Western Apache call themselves Ndee, “the People,” and the Pinaleño and Aravaipa bands of San Carlos say it Innee or Nnēē. This map of the San Carlos Apache Tribe’s land prints Coolidge Dam, the Peridot District Office, San Carlos Apache Healthcare, Rice Elementary School, San Carlos Middle School and the San Carlos Apache Cultural Center, from Bear Canyon Junction out to Black River Crossing, with the Antelope Hills, the Apache Peaks and Ash Mountain giving shape to the land.
The San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation spreads across northern Graham County, southeastern Gila County and eastern Pinal County.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave modern data the look of a vintage atlas. The shaded relief of the Antelope Hills, the Apache Peaks and Ash Mountain comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. Coolidge Dam was confirmed against the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places. In Western Apache the reservation is Tsékʼáádn, and it covers 1.8 million acres of desert, alpine meadow and ponderosa pine forest.
The People of San Carlos
President Ulysses S. Grant established the San Carlos Apache Reservation on December 14, 1872, and the government moved many Apache and Yavapai bands here from their own homelands. Among the San Carlos bands were the Aravaipa, the Pinaleño, the Apache Peaks band, Bichi Lehe Nnee, and the San Carlos people proper, Tiis Zhaazhe Bikoh, the Small Cottonwood Canyon People, who farmed along the San Carlos River. Under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 the bands formed a government and were federally recognized as the San Carlos Nation. San Carlos, Sengaa in Western Apache, is the reservation’s largest community and its seat of government; the other communities include Bylas, Gilson Wash, Peridot and 7mile.
About 6,000 people on the San Carlos Reservation speak Western Apache, and the Tribe’s Language Preservation Program in Peridot began reaching out in 2011 to the tribe’s 14,000 members to help preserve and develop it. Western Apache stories are anchored to real places on the land, told with exact pictures of where things happened, a practice that has been called “speaking with names.” The San Carlos Apache Cultural Center tells the stories and history of the Apache people. In 1999 the tribe founded the Apache Nation Chamber of Commerce, in 2003 it opened a Wellness Center whose round group rooms are built to recall traditional wickiups, and in 2014 Chairman Terry Rambler announced the San Carlos Tribal College, planned with Arizona State University.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Streets and roads: Saw Mill, Rd 1400, Mine Rd, S Chief Ave, E Fork Rd, Apache Rd, Co Rd B19, San Carlos, Mescat Creek, Rte 1215, BIA Rd 900, Rd 9003.
More street names, A to Z
1620 Rd, Allison Pl, Aqueduct Rd, Ash Creek Ranch Rd, Ashurst Rd, BIA Rd 901, BIA Rd 1100, BIA Rd 1210, BIA Rd 1215, BIA Rd 1233, BIA Rd 1500, Bonita Ct, Cain Rd, Canyon Rd, Clover Rd, Creek Rd, Dry Springs Rd, E Goodwin Rd, E Ranch Rd, E Sanchez Rd, Loop Rd, N Cam Rio, Old San Carlos Rd, P Ranch Rd, Ranch Creek, Ranch Rd, Rd 600, Rd 608, Rd 740, Rd 746, Rd 845, Rio Rd, River Rd, Starlight Rd, Trap Rd, Wash Rd, W Klondyke Rd, W Safford-Bryce Rd, Yellowjacket Rd.
Makers and voices
Basket weaver Evalena Henry was born in Peridot in 1939 and learned the craft from her mother, Cecilia Henry, who began weaving in the 1950s to keep the tribe’s traditions alive. Evalena first went to Rice School on the reservation. In the 1970s she began making the burden baskets used in the Sunrise Dance, the coming-of-age ceremony for Apache girls, along with tus baskets for carrying water, sealed with piñon pitch, and in 2001 she was named a National Endowment for the Arts fellow. Chesley Goseyun Wilson, born in Bylas in 1932, made and played the Apache fiddle and received a National Heritage Fellowship in 1989, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts; one of his pieces is in the Smithsonian’s musical instruments collection. Mary Kim Titla became the first Native American television journalist in Arizona in 1987. Artist Douglas Miles, who moved back to the reservation, founded Apache Skateboards in 2002, and painter Lynnette Haozous, an enrolled member, illustrated the 2023 Google Doodle honoring her great-uncle, the sculptor Allan Houser.
Peridot, the lake and the river
Peridot, Tséé Dotłʼizh or “Blue Rock” in Western Apache, is named for the green gem found in the basalt nearby, and Peridot Mesa is one of the most productive places in the world for it; mining there is open only to tribal members or by the tribe’s permit. Eleven miles south of Peridot, Coolidge Dam holds back the Gila and San Carlos rivers. The Bureau of Indian Affairs built it from 1924 to 1928, the Apache opposed it, and its lake now covers old tribal burial grounds. President Calvin Coolidge dedicated it in 1930. San Carlos Lake, rimmed by 158 miles of shoreline, has set state records for largemouth bass, black crappie and flathead catfish, and the tribe’s Recreation and Wildlife Department stocks it. Where the Fort Apache Reservation meets San Carlos, the lower Black River marks the line between them, and Indian Route 9 crosses it at Black River Crossing. San Carlos Apache Healthcare, Rice Elementary School, San Carlos Middle School, the Peridot District Office and Bear Canyon Junction all appear on the sheet.
This map makes a good addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the area. It’s made for everyone who calls San Carlos Apache Tribe home, from Peridot to the Black River, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the land as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the San Carlos Apache Tribe map.
Sources
- San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, Wikipedia
- Western Apache people, Wikipedia
- Western Apache language, Wikipedia
- San Carlos, Arizona, Wikipedia
- Peridot, Arizona, Wikipedia
- Coolidge Dam, Wikipedia
- San Carlos Lake, Wikipedia
- Black River (Arizona), Wikipedia
- Evalena Henry, Wikipedia
- Chesley Goseyun Wilson, Wikipedia
- Mary Kim Titla, Wikipedia
- Douglas Miles, Wikipedia
- Lynnette Haozous, Wikipedia
