"...even though the project would destroy religious and cultural sites sacred to Native Americans..  "

That is based on a myth that the United States Army trapped a bunch of Apache women and children at a place now called Apache Leap, which overlooks Superior, AZ.  The story goes that rather than be captured by the Army all the women and children left behind by a hunting party threw themselves off Apache Leap.  There is no basis in fact other than an unproven mention in the diary of a lieutenant with the Mormon Battalion on its way to San Diego in 1846 to fight in the Mexican-American War.  He made a short mention of others chasing a group of Indians off a cliff which, if it happened, was most likely to have been near a place called Apache Pass on the route of the Mormon Battalion in Southern Arizona.  The place known as Apache Leap is around 90 miles north of Apache Pass - the Mormon Battalion didn't go near there.

20+ years later, the Army had posts to protect miners near Globe/Miami, AZ and at what is now Superior, AZ (formerly known as Pinal, the then home of the Silver King mine).  By this time, however, the Indian Wars were largely over and many Army posts were being closed from Central through Southern Arizona. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Battalion

AND,

Camp Pinal
(Tonto National Forest)
(1870 - 1871), near Miami, and near Superior
Originally known as Infantry Camp, Pinal Mountains, located at the Pinal Ranch near the headwaters of Mineral and Pinto Creeks, six (or eleven ?) miles west of Miami. Occupied by the 21st Infantry, Companies A, E, G, and I, from November 1870 - July 1871. It had been renamed in May 1871.

The post was then relocated as Camp Picket Post, located to the west on Queen Creek near Picket Post Butte, about one and one-half mile west of Superior, but was abandoned after only nine days. The mining town Pinal was later established here in 1877 when the Silver King Mine was opened. Interpretive signage is located on the Picket Post Trail within the Tonto National Forest, hiking access via Forest Road 310.

https://www.northamericanforts.com/West/az.html#picket