Lieutenant Colonel George Crook arrived in the Southwest in June 1871 with a single mandate: end the skirmishes between settlers and members of the Yavapai and Apache tribes in central Arizona Territory. His method was systematic and exhausting. The Tonto Basin Campaign sent detachment after detachment into the rugged terrain of central Arizona, tracking bands of warriors through canyons and across mesas in a grinding war of attrition. Over twenty clashes marked the campaign. The most devastating came in December 1872 at Salt River Canyon, where soldiers attacked a Yavapai camp sheltered beneath a cliff overhang. Seventy-six people died in that assault, many killed by ricocheting bullets off the cave ceiling. It was a catastrophe for the Yavapai, but it did not end the fighting. On March 11, 1873, a band of Tonto Apaches attacked and killed three white men, and Crook's scouts tracked the attackers to a stronghold on Turret Peak.

Turret Peak rises from the rugged terrain of central Arizona, its steep slopes and rocky outcrops offering natural fortification. Crook's men approached under cover of darkness. Captain Randall, commanding the combined force of soldiers and Apache Scouts, began the ascent around midnight. The order was absolute silence. Men crawled upward on hands and knees, placing each limb carefully to avoid dislodging loose stones that would echo down the mountainside and alert the camp above. Hours passed in agonizing, deliberate movement. The soldiers waited through the cold predawn hours, positioned just below the rancheria, holding until the first gray light appeared on the eastern horizon. Then they charged.

The surprise was total. Soldiers burst into the rancheria near the crest and the Yavapai defenders, jolted awake to find enemies already among them, were thrown into chaos. In their terror, many simply leaped from the mountainside, falling to their deaths on the rocks below. Others fought briefly before being killed or surrendering. By the time the shooting stopped, fifty-seven people lay dead. Several more were wounded and captured. The aftermath revealed a grim truth: civilians had been sheltering in a cave within the camp, and some were killed by covering fire or by rolling rocks dislodged during the assault. The violence was indiscriminate in its reach, touching combatants and non-combatants alike.

Turret Peak broke something that Salt River Canyon had not. The accumulated losses, the relentless pursuit through their own homeland, and now the violation of what had seemed an unassailable refuge left the Yavapai and Tonto Apache people demoralized beyond recovery. Two weeks after the battle, on April 6, 1873, large numbers of the remaining resistance surrendered to Crook at Camp Verde. The Tonto Basin Campaign was effectively over. Several of the soldiers who fought at Turret Peak were later awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions during the night assault. For the Yavapai and Tonto Apache, the surrender marked the beginning of reservation life and the end of their autonomy in the mountains and basins they had inhabited for generations.