Part 26 (1/2)
”In order to provide a place of refuge for such as were being hunted and hounded, President Taylor sent parties into Mexico to arrange for the purchase of land in that country, upon which the fugitive Saints might settle. One of the first sites selected for this purpose was just across the line in the State of Sonora. Elder Christopher Layton made choice of this locality. Other lands were secured in the State of Chihuahua.
President Taylor and his party called upon Governor Torres at Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, and were received by that official with marked courtesy.”
Historian Whitney states that the Taylor party then went westward by way of the Salt River Valley settlements to the Pacific Coast. And this office has a record to the effect that, in January, President Taylor visited also the settlements of the Little Colorado section and counseled concerning the disposition of several of the early towns of that locality.
Of Arizona interest is the fact that for two and a half years thereafter, the President of the Mormon Church was in exile, till the date of his death, July 25, 1887, in Kaysville, Utah. Much of the intervening time was spent in Arizona and a part of it in Mexico, in the settlements that had been established as places of refuge. His declining months, however, were spent in Utah, even entire communities guarding well the secret of the presence of their spiritual head.
Arizona's First Artesian Well
Possibly the first artesian well known in Arizona was developed in the St. David settlement. In 1885 a bounty of $1500 was offered for the development of artesian water. The reward was claimed by the McRae brothers, who developed a flow of about thirty gallons a minute, but who failed to receive any reward. Five years ago, J.S. Merrill of St. David reported that within the San Pedro Valley were about 200 flowing wells, furnis.h.i.+ng from five to 150 gallons a minute. The deepest valley well was about 600 feet. At that time about 2000 acres were irrigated by the St.
David ca.n.a.l and by the wells, sustaining a population of about 600 souls.
Development of a Market at Tombstone
It happened on the San Pedro, just as in many other places, that the Mormons were just a little ahead of some great development. September 3, 1877, at Tucson, Ed. Schieffelin recorded the first of his mining claims in Tombstone District, which then lay in Pima County.
Schieffelin's first discovery was several miles from the later site of Tombstone and about four miles from the San Pedro. Later, with d.i.c.k Gird and Al Schieffelin, the original discoverer located the lower group of mines in the camp of Tombstone, then established. A number of other settlements sprang up, including the nearby Richmond, Watervale and the mill towns of Charleston and Contention City, both on the San Pedro, where water could be secured.
Several miles west of Tombstone, just where Ed Schieffelin camped at the time of the discovery of his Tombstone claim, is a large monument of cemented rock, under which lie his remains, brought back from the Northwest for interment in the land he loved. His death was on May 12, 1897.
The Tombstone Gold & Silver Milling & Mining Company, of which former Gov. A.P.K. Safford was president, in 1880 owned the original group of Schieffelin claims, of which the Tough Nut was the main property. A stamp mill was built on the San Pedro and a contract entered into with the Mormons to build a dam and ditch, from which it was hoped to secure motive power. Concerning this job, estimated to cost $6000, Merrill later wrote that the contractors found themselves fined $300 for six days'
overtime on completion of the job. Joseph McRae's record tells that, in 1879, some of the brethren went up the river, twenty miles above St.
David, and put in a rip-rap dam and a mile and a half of ditch at Charleston for the Boston Mining Company. This may have been the Boston & Arizona Smelting & Reduction Company, a Ma.s.sachusetts corporation which had a twenty-stamp mill and a roasting furnace on the San Pedro, between Charleston and Contention, ten miles from Tombstone. This job returned $6000 in cash.
The mines brought a relative degree of prosperity to the San Pedro settlement, furnis.h.i.+ng a ready and profitable market for agricultural products, but especially calling upon all transportation facilities that could be afforded. Teams were busy hauling from the terminus of the railroad at Tucson and at Benson, until, in October, 1882, there was completion of the New Mexico and Arizona railroad, then a Santa Fe corporation, from Benson to Nogales, much of the way through the San Pedro Valley, past St. David and the milling towns. The mines paid $30 a cord for fuel wood and even $40 a ton for hay.
Lean days descended upon the community, however, in the early summer of 1886, when the great pumps of the Grand Central mine were stopped by fire. The following year Tombstone practically was abandoned and the market it had afforded was lost. Not till 1901 did the camp revive. It closed again in June, 1903, by the drowning of the pumps. Latterly the old mines, consolidated, have been worked to some extent by the Phelps-Dodge Corporation, but again have been closed, early in April, 1921.
Chapter Twenty-two
On the Upper Gila
Ancient Dwellers and Military Travelers
Possibly as representative a region as is known in the settlement area of the Mormon people lies for about 25 miles along the Gila River in eastern Arizona, in Graham County, and within St. Joseph Stake. Over a dozen communities are contained within this section and all are distinctly Mormon in settlement and local operation, save Solomonville, at the upper end, and Safford, the county seat and princ.i.p.al town. Most of the land is owned by the Saints, who control, as well, a dozen small ca.n.a.ls. Within the Stake have been included Mormon settlements of the San Pedro Valley and those upon the upper Gila, in Greenlee County, extending over into New Mexico and El Paso.
The settlement of the Graham County section of the Gila Valley did not start with the Mormons. Far from it. In the upper end of the cultivated region is one of the most notable groups of ruins in the Southwest. This group, since the coming of the Spaniard, appears to have borne the name of Pueblo Viejo (Sp., ”Old Town”). Somewhere farther down the stream is a.s.sumed to have been ”Chichilticalli,” the ”red house”
mentioned in the chronicles of Marco de Niza and the Coronado expedition.
The valley was traversed, from east to west, by Gen. S.W. Kearny, on his way, with a dragoon escort, in 1846, to take California from the Mexicans, this command, from the Pima villages westward, forming the advance guard for the Mormon Battalion. Much interesting data of the Gila Valley trip was written by Lieutenant Emory, who later was chief of the Boundary Survey. It is notable that in 1846 Mount Graham already was known by that name.
Early Days Around Safford
A few Mexicans were in the valley as early as 1871, farming in the vicinity of Pueblo Viejo, immediately below which later arose the town of Solomonville. In 1872 was the first Anglo-Saxon settlement, a group of farmers coming from Gila Bend, upon the Gila River, where they had attempted farming and had failed because the wandering river had washed away their dams and headgates. These farmers, financed in Tucson for the building of the Montezuma ca.n.a.l, settled in the vicinity of Safford, where about that time, was established a townsite, named in honor of Gov.
A.P.K. Safford who, from Tucson, then was making a tour of that part of Arizona Territory.