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Early Roads and Travelers

Old Spanish Trail Through Utah

There can be little more than speculation concerning the extent of the use of the old Spanish Trail, through southern Utah, by the Spaniards. It is known, however, that considerable travel passed over it between Santa Fe and the California missions and settlements. In winter there was the disadvantage of snow in the Rockies and in summer were the aridity and heat of the Mohave desert. In Utah was danger from the Utes and farther westward from the Paiutes, but expeditions went well armed and exercised incessant watchfulness.

The much more direct route across Arizona on the 35th parallel was used by few Spaniards, though assuredly easier than that northward around the Canyon of the Colorado River. This direct route was traversed in 1598 by Juan de Onate, New Mexico's first Spanish governor, and, in 1776, Father Garces went from the Colorado eastward to the Hopi villages. There was travel over what became known as the "Road of the Bishop" from Santa Fe to the Zuni and Hopi towns, but not beyond. Possibly the preference for the San Juan-Virgin route lay in the fact that it had practicable river fords.

This old Spanish Trail from Santa Fe to Los Angeles, undoubtedly was over a succession of aboriginal highways. The first Europeans to follow it were the Franciscan friars Escalante and Dominguez, in 1776. They took a route running northwest from Taos, New Mexico, through the San Juan country into Utah as far as Utah Lake, not reaching Great Salt Lake, and thence to the southwest through the Sevier Valley to the upper waters of the Virgin hoping to work through to California. They had an intelligent idea concerning the extent of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and knew there could be no crossing for several hundred miles. After traveling down the Santa Clara and Virgin to about where the Arizona line now is, they turned eastward again, probably because of lack of supplies and fear of the desert. Their travel eastward was not far from the 37th parallel on either side and their Indian guides finally led them, by way of the mouth of the Paria, to the Ute ford of the Colorado, now known as the Crossing of the Fathers. Thence, crossing the river November 8, 1776, they made their way to the Hopi villages and back to the Rio Grande, finishing one of the most notable exploring trips ever known in the west. It is interesting to consider how, nearly a century later, the "Pathfinder," John C. Fremont, thought himself on a new line of discovery when he took much the same road westward through the passes of the Rockies.

This Spanish Trail is outlined on a fur-trade map in the Bancroft Library, covering the period from 1807 to 1843. No road is marked across the present area of Arizona. The Spanish Trail seems to have been considered as the western extension of the Santa Fe Trail.

The famous old traveler, Jedediah Smith, in 1826 and 1827, journeyed by the Sevier and Virgin River route to the Colorado River, though he appears to have made his own way, paralleling the aboriginal highway. In August of 1827, a number of his party were killed by Mohave Indians on the Colorado River.

Creation of the Mormon Road

The discovery of gold in California gave very great added importance to this southern Utah route. When the Washoe passes were closed by snow, California travel by the plains route necessarily was diverted, either around by Oregon or southward through the Virgin River section. The latter route appears to have been safe enough in winter, save for occasional attacks by Indians, who were bent more upon plunder than upon murder. Occasionally, parties sought a shorter cut to the westward and suffered disaster in the sands of the Amargosa desert or of Death Valley. Sometimes such men as Jacob Hamblin were detailed to act as guides, but this seemed to be more needed with respect to dealings with the Indians than to show the road, as the highway was a plain one through to San Bernardino and San Gabriel. Of summers, undoubtedly the travel was much lessened, as the goldseekers chose the much more direct and better-watered routes passing either north or south of Lake Tahoe, by Donner Lake and Emigrant Gap or by the Placerville grade.

The western end of the southern Utah-Nevada trail, after the establishment of the San Bernardino colony, soon became known as the Mormon road, a name preserved.

Mail service was known over the old Spanish or Mormon Trail, down the Virgin and to Los Angeles, at different times between 1850 and 1861. This service seems to have been as an alternative when the passes of the Sierra Nevadas were closed. The best evidence at hand concerning this route is contained within a claim made by one Chorpending, for compensation from the United States for mules and equipment stolen by Indians in 1854–1856. John Hunt, later of Snowflake, carried mail on the route in 1856 and 1857. There must be assumption that stage stations were maintained on the Muddy and at Vegas.

With the Lyman and Rich expedition, in 1851, one of the wagons bore Apostle Parley P. Pratt who, accompanied by Rufus C. Allen, was starting upon a mission to the southwest coast of South America. On May 13, there was note of encampment at "a large spring, usually called Las Vegas," after having traveled 200 miles through worthless desert and between mountains of naked rock.

Mormon Settlement at Tubac

To Commissioner John R. Bartlett, of the International Boundary Survey, the Author is indebted for a memorandum covering what clearly was the first Mormon settlement within the present confines of Arizona. It was at the old Spanish pueblo of Tubac, in the Santa Cruz valley, about forty miles south of Tucson. Both places then (in July, 1852), still were in Mexico, the time being two years before perfecting the Gadsden Purchase.

Tubac, according to the Commissioner, was "a collection of dilapidated buildings and huts, about half tenantless, and an equally ruinous church." He called it "a God-forsaken place," but gave some interesting history. After a century and a half of occupation, usually with a population of about 400, it had been abandoned a year before the Commissioner's arrival, but had been repopulated by possibly 100 individuals. There was irrigation from the Santa Cruz, but of uncertain sort, and it was this very uncertainty that lost to Arizona a community of settlers of industry surely rare in that locality. Bartlett's narrative recites:

The preceding fall (of 1851), after the place has been again occupied, a party of Mormons, in passing through on their way to California, was induced to stop there by the representations of the Mexican comandante. He offered them lands in the rich valley, where acequias (irrigation ditches) were already dug, if they would remain and cultivate it; assuring them that they would find a ready market for all the corn, wheat and vegetables they could raise, from the troops and from passing emigrants. The offer was so good and the prospects were so flattering that they consented to remain. They, therefore, set to work, plowed and sowed their lands, in which they expended all their means, anticipating an abundant harvest. But the spring and summer came without rain: the river dried up; their fields could not be irrigated; and their labor, time and money was lost. They abandoned the place, and, though reduced to the greatest extremities, succeeded in reaching Santa Isabel in California, where we fell in with them.

The Santa Isabel meeting referred to had taken place in the previous May, 1852. Santa Isabel was an old vista of San Diego Mission, about forty miles northeast of San Diego and on the road from that port to Fort Yuma. In the Commissioner's party, eastbound, was the noted scout, Antoine LeRoux, who had been one of the guides of the Mormon Battalion westward, in 1846. Bartlett wrote:

"LeRoux had been sent to the settlement at San Bernardino, to purchase a vehicle from newly-arrived Mormon immigrants and to return with it to Santa Isabel. When the wagon came … it was driven by its owner, named Smithson. After paying him, I invited him to remain with us over night, as he had had a fatiguing day's journey. We were very much amused during the evening in listening to the history of our Mormon friend, who also enlightened us with a lecture on the peculiar doctrines of his sect. He seemed a harmless, though zealous man, ardent in his religious belief and was, I should think, a fair specimen of his fraternity. His people had lately purchased the extensive haciendas and buildings at San Bernardino, covering several miles square, for $70,000, one-half of which amount they had paid in cash. This is one of the richest agricultural districts in the State and is said to have been a great bargain."

Bartlett's narrative, while interesting, does not inform concerning the identity of the Mormons at Tubac. Including Smithson, doubtless they were swallowed within the San Bernardino settlement. Just where the Tubac settlers came from is not clear. There seems probability that they were from one of the southern States, started directly for San Bernardino, instead of via Salt Lake, in the same manner that an Arkansas expedition went directly to the Little Colorado settlements in later years.

Tubac dates back to about 1752. Possibly not pertinent to the subject of this work, yet valuable, is a map of Tubac, herewith reproduced, drawn about 1760 by Jose de Urrutia. This map lately was found in the British Museum at London by Godfrey Sykes, of the Desert Laboratory at Tucson. From him receipt of a copy is acknowledged, with appreciation. The plat includes the irrigated area below the presidio.

A Texan Settlement of the Faith

The Commissioner traveled broadly and chronicled much and the Author is indebted to his memoirs for several items of early Mormon settlement in the Southwest.

One of the earliest details given by Bartlett concerns his arrival, October 14, 1850, at the village of Zodiac, in the valley of the Piedernales River, near Fredericksburg, about seventy miles northwest of San Antonio, Texas. Zodiac he found a village of 150 souls, headed by Elder Wight, locally known as "Colonel," who acted as host. That the settlement, even in such early times, was typically Mormon, is shown by the following extract from Bartlett's diary:

"Everywhere around us in this Zodiacal settlement we saw abundant signs of prosperity. Whatever may be their theological errors, in secular matters they present an example of industry and thrift which the people of the State might advantageously imitate. They have a tract of land which they have cultivated for about three years and which has yielded profitable crops. The well-built houses, perfect fences and tidy dooryards give the place a homelike air such as we had not seen before in Texas. The dinner was a regular old-fashioned New England farmer's meal, comprising an abundance of everything, served with faultless neatness. The entire charge for the dinner for twelve persons and corn for as many animals was $3. … The colonel said he was the first settler in the valley of the Piedernales and for many miles around. In his colony were people of all trades. He told me his crop of corn this year would amount to 7000 bushels, for which he expected to realize $1.25 a bushel."