USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 39
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At the forks of the Vulture road, not far from the present railroad station of Morristown, an overloaded teamster cached 600 pounds of dynamite. A few hours later, another freighter noted the pile, tarpaulin-covered, around it sniffing a coyote. The opportunity for a rifle shot was good and was promptly taken, but the shooter, at a distance of several hundred yards, immediately was flattened to the earth by what seemed to be the end of the world. Whether the bullet hit the coyote or not was immaterial. At any rate it was chronicled that the animal undoubtedly died.
CHAPTER XXII
FROM CAMELS TO AUTOS
Jefferson Davis' Experiment with "Ships of the Desert"-Beale's Experiences with Camels-Turned Loose on the Arizona Plains-The Faithful Burro-Modern Roads and Bridges-Military Telegraph Lines.
A mistaken idea of the character of the southwestern "deserts," which with respect to sand are not at all similar to the deserts of Africa, induced Congress, in 1855, to authorize the expenditure of $30,000 for the purpose of buying camels and taking them to the Southwest to be used for military transportation purposes. Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, was an enthusiastic sup- porter of the scheme. He detailed Maj. Henry C. Wayne to proceed to the Levant without delay and there execute the provisions of the act. Major Wayne journeyed far and had many interesting experiences with Turkish, Arabic and Egyptian camel sellers, who appeared to have been more expert in trade than even the far-famed Yankee horse dealers. Finally, at Smyrna, he completed the purchase of about thirty camels. Several calves were added during the voyage to America, which was made on the naval store ship Supply, com- manded by Lieut. D. D. Porter, afterward the famous naval leader of the Civil War. The camels were landed on the coast of Texas in May, 1856, and in the following January-Lieutenant Porter added to the herd a second lot of forty- one.
Wayne became deeply interested in the camels and kept busy in train- ing the brutes and inventing new methods whereby they might be made useful under their new environment. In this work his best assistance was from two Greeks, Hi Jolly and Greek George. Few of the soldiers developed any expert- ness in riding the ships of the desert and it is told that harassed cavalrymen, unable to acquire the expertness of the Greeks in packing or riding, often assisted in stampeding their ungainly mounts, with the fond hope that they would never return. It took months of association also to keep horses or mules from bolting at the sight of a camel.
LIEUTENANT BEALE'S CAMELS
The first practical test of the animals was made in the cross-country survey of Edw. F. Beale, which started from San Antonio, Texas, June 25, 1857. Each camel at first had a load of about 576 pounds, which later was increased to 700, though occasionally raised to 1,200 pounds. Indeed, there is a tale that a camel carrying 2,000 pounds made fifty miles in California in a single day. Some of the Turkish drivers left the party at San Antonio, on the excuse that they
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had not received pay due, and the "ships of the desert" thereafter had to be steered by inexperienced occidental hands. There was trouble at first, but soon there was better knowledge concerning methods of packing, and the camels gained in popularity when at last they proved equal to keeping up with the' wagons. The leader of the party wrote that he had become convinced of their usefulness, that "their perfect docility and patience under difficulties renders them invaluable, and my only regret at present is that I have not double the number." When the Rio Grande Valley was entered, the camels found a food much to their taste in the screw-bean mesquite, and in general they preferred brush to grass. A drink of water a day seemed all they wanted. A couple of months later Beale again wrote: "Certainly there never was anything so patient and enduring and so little troublesome as this noble animal. They pack their heavy load of corn, of which they never taste a grain, put up with any food offered them, without complaint, and are always up with the wagons, and, withal, so perfectly docile and quiet that they are the admiration of the whole camp. They are better to-day than when we left Camp Verde with them, especially since our men have learned the best mode of packing them."
One Arizona experience proved their high value, for they were used in pack- ing water back to the mules, after an ignorant guide had caused the party to get more than thirty miles from a spring. They were used on every reconnois- ance while the mules were resting. Heat and cold alike seemed to affect them little.
The Legislature of the State of New York, under date of April 15, 1854, gave additional official standing to the ship of the desert by incorporation of the American Camel Company, within which as commissioners were named Wm. G. King, Chas. W. Webher and Edward Magauran, authorized to receive stock subscriptions to the amount of $100,000, "for the purpose of importing camels from Asia and Africa into the United States, so as to make that animal applicable to the purpose of burden, transportation, subsistence and fabrics." The prospectus issued by the commissioners gave much data concerning the habits and usefulness of the camel and made the claim that "the camel is the animal of all others best adapted for facilitating and extending commercial intercourse over the deserts and plains intervening between the Mississippi and Pacific Ocean." Introduction of the camel in the West was considered only second to that of the horse, starting "a second great epoch in the history of the domestication of animals useful to man on this continent." Particularly quoted in the prospectus were observations of Boundary Commissioner Bartlett, who, in his work on the Southwest, stated: "I do not hesitate to hazard the opinion that the introduction of camels and dromedaries would prove of immense benefit to our present means of transportation, that they would be a great saving of animal life and would present facilities for crossing our broad deserts and prairies not possessed by any other domestic animals now in use."
CAMELS ON THE ARIZONA PLAINS
Interesting data concerning camels in the Southwest was gathered by Gov. L. C. Hughes in 1893. He found that a number were driven westward over the southern route, with the loss of some near Agua Caliente, on the Gila, and that, "Of the camels taken to California, a number were returned to Arizona
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A FREIGHTING "OUTFIT"
ARIZONA'S FIRST BURDEN BEARER, THE BURRO
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in 1876, for the purpose of transporting ores from the then rich Silver King mine. Here, again, their presence was objected to by teamsters and freighters, and the band was turned loose between the Gila and Colorado rivers, through which section they have been roaming ever since. In 1883 nine of the band were captured by Papago Indians and turned over to a circus. At that time there were twenty head in the band, eleven of which were two or three years old. The Arizona stock is said to be a great improvement on the original." In the same data is copied an article credited to Col. D. K. Allen, of the Yuma Sentinel, who stated : "At the present time there are ninety-seven of them in the mountains and hills east of the Yuma and Harqua Hala wagon roads, away from the haunts of white men and Indians. They have roamed mostly in the Eagle Tail and adjoining ranges, where few, if any, human beings ever go. It is estimated that if none had been killed there would now be not less than 1,000. They are very wild and vicious and make a hard fight when caught or even cornered." The Governor recommended that the remaining camels in Arizona be captured and removed to some national park.
In the fifteenth century Spaniards took African camels to Peru, but they were found less available for transportation uses than the native llama.
A number of the camels were sent westward into Arizona and to Drum Barracks, near Los Angeles, consigned to L. P. Redwine. It was found that their feet would not stand the rocks of the Southwest and it was also found that they needed special care and attention that could not be given by the casual packer or cavalryman. The remnants of the herds eventually were sold in Texas to menageries and in California to a Frenchman, who in turn failed in finding the beasts of any use, either in Nevada or Arizona. So the camels were driven out into the desert to shift for themselves. Before the coming of the railroad, east of Yuma, numbers of them, undoubtedly seeking human compan- ionship and with the memory of oats, occasionally were seen by freighters. As the appearance of the weird animals inevitably threw every mule team into a panic, it became the custom to shoot the unwelcome visitors ou sight.
In the summer of 1880 two camels were captured east of Yuma by Ryland's traveling circus, wherein for several years they constituted all there was of the menagerie, draped with plush trappings on which were set forth the names, respectively, of Romeo and Juliet.
Chief Engineer William Hood of the Southern Pacific told of seeing camels when he was laying out the line of his road in Southern Arizona in the late '70s. A camel cow and calf were seen by a prospector at a water hole near Quitova- quita on the Sonora border about fifteen years ago, and about 1909 two camels were reported to have been seen in the vicinity of Quartzsite in northern Yuma County. It is not improbable that a few of them, of a younger generation, still have succeeded in evading the rifles of the teamsters and are roaming the deserts near the international line. Their existence was even recognized by statute a few years ago, by including them within the Arizona game laws as protected at all seasons of the year.
Both of the Greek camel drivers ended their days in Arizona. George is said to have been killed near Prescott by a Mexican, who accused him of cheating at cards, and Hi Jolly died at Harrisburg, Yuma County, in 1902.
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THE EVER-FAITHFUL BURRO
The pioneer transportation factor of the Southwest, however, was the mule's near kin, the burro, meekly bearing on his back the weight of many afflictions, as well as the cross which, the Mexicans tell, was placed there by the Savior as a reward for the journey that ended at the gates of Jerusalem. The burro is nothing more than the native ass of Andalusia and Barbary and was brought to America by the Spaniards soon after the country's European occupation. The burro has borne over the mountains of Arizona the pack of almost every pros- pector, and upon him is the only reliance for bringing down the ores of mines of the mountain peaks. Nowadays he is usually found with the Mexicans, living on less than the demands of an outcast dog, apparently relishing brushwood quite as well as the most succulent alfalfa. Back in the days of the first white settlement, where wagon roads were not or were mere apologies, the burro brought in the supplies needed for the civilization of the day. Sol Barth, with a train of 100 or more burros, brought flour to Wickenburg and Prescott from the Pima villages or even from far down in Central Sonora. He brought flour and grain on burroback from Ehrenberg and salt from the great Zuñi salt well over the New Mexican border. Today the burro is the companion of the sheep- herder, moving with the flocks and as faithful as are the collies. On his back is brought down the firewood that is used in the mining camps of Arizona. He has been almost indispensable in the upbuilding of the commonwealth.
AUTOMOBILE ROADS OF TODAY
For about five years Arizona has been pursuing a good roads policy, mainly due to the spread of the use of the automobile. State highways have been constructed, from Prescott through Phoenix to Douglas and a start has been made on two transcontinental highways, one from Yuma through Phoenix to the eastward and another paralleling the Santa Fe Railroad in the north-central part of the state. A number of expensive bridges have had to be built, the most important those across the Salt at Tempe and across the Gila at Florence. Both of these were built mainly by convict labor, which has been generally used upon highway construction as well. The latest bridge of importance is that which, in the spring of 1915, was completed across the Colorado River at Yuma, its west- ern abutments upon the site of the historic Fort Yuma. It had formal dedica- tion on June 20th, when Governor Johnson, of California, and Governor Hunt, of Arizona, shook hands across a mark that located the interstate line. Not till then was there discontinuance of the historic ferry that dated back to the days of the California Argonauts.
THE COMING OF THE TELEGRAPH
The benefits of telegraphic communication first were enjoyed by Arizona in 1873. Congress had voted $50,311.20 for the construction of 540 miles of military telegraph line from San Diego, California, via Fort Yuma and Mari- copa Wells, to Prescott and Tucson. The military authorities feared they would not get the appropriation at all, and the amount asked for was so insufficient that there could be set only seventeen posts to the mile, so it was jokingly told at the time recourse had to be had to giant cacti and mesquite trees. The following year an additional appropriation of $40,000 was made for extension of the lines
BABY-GAUGE MINING RAILROAD AT CORONADO
COLORADO RIVER STEAMBOAT WITH BARGE, AT YUMA BRIDGE
WAGON BRIDGE OVER SALT RIVER, TEMPE
FORT YUMA AND FERRY RAILROAD BRIDGE ACROSS THE COLO- RADO AT PARKER
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to Fort Verde and Camp Apache, and a year later $30,000 more was appropri- ated for still further extensions. The line was of tremendous benefit to the military, giving immediate communication between forts in the event of Indian troubles and rendering unnnecessary the services of the gallant couriers, who, at the risk of their lives, had theretofore dashed across the Apache-infested country, carrying orders. It was years before the Apaches began to fully appreciate the importance of the iron string and to learn that it should first be cut away before any deviltry was attempted.
Then the soldier linemen encountered added dangers. Owing to the tem- porary construction of the main line, there was continual work for the soldiers of the signal corps, who acted as operators and linemen. Most of the trouble was on the western side of the Colorado, where Lieutenant Reade, placed in charge of the system in 1875, reported that as poles twenty-five feet in height were frequently covered up by sand in storms, they should be replaced by cable. The telegraph service was of great benefit also to the civil population, bringing news of the outside world and even permitting the printing of press reports in the newspapers of the day. The military telegraph lines were in operation till succeeded by the railroad lines along the main southern highways and for years thereafter provided the only telegraphic communication into North Central Arizona.
When the line of the northern extension was laid out, Phoenix was left off to one side, much to the disgust of its inhabitants. A storekeeper in Phoenix then was Morris Goldwater, later distinguished as one of Arizona's legislators. He lately told how he secured a change of route through Phoenix from Maj. Geo. F. Price, U. S. A., and R. R. Haynes, who were building the line. This was done when Goldwater, who had some knowledge of telegraphy, offered to donate a set of instruments, which he had on hand, and also to serve as operator free of charge. The office was in Goldwater's store at the corner of First and Jefferson streets. Goldwater served as an unpaid volunteer till displaced by a member of the signal corps and the office was moved to the stage office, near the corner of Washington and Center streets. The first operator employed was Chas. M. Clark, now a resident of Miami. Whipple was reached September 2, 1873.
CHAPTER XXIII
SOUTHWESTERN RAILROADS
Helped by Land Grants and Subsidies-Fremont's Large Plans-Coming of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe Systems-How the Arizona Branch Lines Were Built -- The Phelps-Dodge Roads-Railroad Lights that Failed.
Immediately after the Mexican war, Congress materially helped in the exploration and eventual development of Arizona by voting liberal appropria- tions for surveys for transcontinental railroad lines. The route on the thirty- fifth parallel, afterward occupied by the Santa Fé System, was declared feasible hy Sitgreaves in 1851 and, soon after, was carefully surveyed by Lieutenant Whipple. In the south a route was found north of the Gila, but the Gadsden Purchase in 1853 had its chiefest reason in a wish to get a better. Gray, Emory, Michler and other army engineers surveyed the Gila Valley and even more southerly routes, uniformly with final approval. In those days, however, there seemed to be little thought of anything save the passage of the wilderness, that access might be had to the Golden State and connection secured between the scaboards. Only Emory seemed to think of the freight that would come from copper mining, and even he mentally placed that freight on flatboats on the Gila River.
Probably the most definite plan to build a railroad across the continent on the southern route was that of the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific Railroad Com- pany, which was incorporated by the Legislature of Texas February 4, 1856, with a large grant of State lands. The lands could not be sold and the Civil War added still greater perplexities, but in 1868 the company was heard from, once more in a petition to Congress for a loan of United States bonds. The Texans secured John C. Frémont as attorney and sent him east to raise funds. A chronicler of the times tells how the Pathfinder fell into the hands of Marshall O. Roberts, "who, for the trifling consideration of 11,000 ont of 20,000 shares of stock, agreed to float the enterprise. Having thus secured control, he now proceeded to freeze out the Texans by levying a 5 per cent assessment upon the stock." This stroke of high finance seems to have been countered by Frémont's friends and construction of the line later was aided by congressional grants.
Frémont along in this period seems to have bloomed out as a promoter. In 1867 he was accredited as being the brains of a plan to connect by rail Norfolk, Virginia, with Guaymas, Sonora, possibly the longest line ever then projected. Frémont, who was to be general manager, according to a letter of April 24th of that year, held "a written contract with Juarez and with Maximilian, bv which an area of territory thirty miles in width on either side of his road is
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granted through Sonora and Chihuahua from the confines of northern Texas to Guaymas on the Gulf of California. The company holds 10,000,000 aeres in Texas, security enough to induce the general government to advance bonds to the amount of $16,000 a mile. If Congress fail, there are French capitalists who propose to furnish the money and to accept a mortgage on the company's lands."
In January, 1867, also, Fremont, who had his office in New York, was president of the original Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Company, a corporation capitalized at $100,000,000, organized to build 2,000 miles of railroad and claiming a grant of 55,000,000 acres, under a congressional act of July 27, 1866. He was president also of an older and interlocking corporation, the Southwest Pacific Railroad Company, which had completed ninety miles of road and reported 200 more miles under construction, and which then had acquired a land grant of 1,250,000 acres. This road had been bought by Frémont, person- ally, in May, 1866, for $1,300,000, assuredly a sum that did not come out of the vest pocket of the always impecunious Pathfinder. In this connection it is interesting to note that, as early as February 7, 1849, Frémont's father-in-law, Senator Benton, of Missouri, had pushed a bill in Congress for the location of a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, with a subsidy grant of the major part of the proceeds from the sale of public lands in the localities traversed.
The Union Pacific division of the National Pacific Railroad in 1868 asked aid on equal terms with the Union and Central Pacific lines for a road that should pass through Arizona, which was being surveyed on both the thirty-second and thirty-fifth parallels. The famous John Le Conte was chief geologist on these surveys.
From the westward a number of corporations sought governmental aid in building to the Colorado River from San Francisco or San Diego, along survey lines already established by the Government.
Soon after the establishment of the territorial government, railroad subjects cropped up in large number. The Second Legislature in December, 1865, incor- porated the La Paz & Prescott Railroad Company, which appeared to be headed by one of the legislators, Manuel Ravena. Congress was asked by the Legisla- ture to donate to the company every alternate quarter-section of land along the line when located. Another corporation was the Prescott, Phoenix, Tucson & Sonora Railroad, which was to run as far south as Guaymas. Even more inter- esting was the Utah Southern, which, already completed to Nephi, 120 miles south of Salt Lake, was to be continued on to Prescott. Just how the crossing of the Grand Canon was to be negotiated was not told, though it is probable a feasible route exists by way of Hardyville or Lee's Ferry.
LAND GRANTS FOR TWO RAILROADS
Congress early made provision for two transcontinental railroads across Ari- zona, respectively on the thirty-fifth and thirty-second parallels of latitude. To both were attached land grants of alternate sections for forty miles on either side of the railroad line, The southern route was to be taken by the Texas- Pacific Railroad Company, which in the middle '70s had been completed to Fort Worth, Texas. It made a couple of surveys across Southern Arizona for
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what the old-timers knew as the "Tom Scott road," named after the railroad's president. One route approximately followed the Gila, a line of excellent gradient, but of expensive construction. The other was by way of Tucson, much on the line later followed by the Southern Pacific. To hold the franchise . some work was done in the way of grading at San Carlos and Yuma. At the latter point there is still in evidence a cut that was to have led to a bridge across the Colorado. Undoubtedly the road would have built through to the coast had its main promoter been able to raise the necessary funds. Possibly it is as well that he did not, for had the road been built, every alternate section along the line, within a strip of eighty miles width, would have become the property of the railroad company, leading to complications that might have affected adversely the prosperity that later has been known by the agricultural valleys of the Gila and Salt.
It was in 1877 that the Arizona Legislature first took notice of the possibility of the construction of a real railroad, giving authority to the Southern Pacific Railroad Company, a California corporation, to maintain railroad and telegraph lines across this territory eastwardly on two routes. The first was to be from a point on the Colorado River near Needles, practically on the line of the thirty- fifth parallel. The grant of authority to the railroad was extremely liberal, with the limitation of passenger fare to 10 cents a mile and a freight tariff not to exceed 15 cents a mile for each ton.
There was a good deal of log rolling over the Southern Pacific Railroad fran- chise and a strong lobby to push its passage was established in Tucson under the leadership of Phineas Banning, of Los Angeles. The measure was held up for some time, probably for the reception of "arguments," but it is told that the committee on territorial affairs, at a meeting held in Charlie Brown's Congress Hall saloon, finally concluded to recommend the bill for passage. It may be worthy of note that in later years C. P. Huntington, head of the Southern Pacific, set the "value" of an Arizona Legislature at the ridiculously low figure of $4,800. But he may not have referred at the time to this particular franchise grant. The territorial charter was dated October 8, 1878. The city council of Tucson provided the right-of-way and depot grounds without cost and, on June 21, 1879, $10,000 in bonds was voted to pay for lands needed by the railroad company.
COMING OF THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC
The Southern Pacific was completed to the west bank of the Colorado River, opposite Yuma, in May, 1877. The bridge then had to be built, and it was not until September 29th that operation into Yuma was attempted. There had been no hurry, up to that point, and there had been a long delay at Indio, California. There was a serious dispute with the United States authorities, which suffered the building of the railroad and the bridge, but which denied the company the right to run trains across the Colorado or on the military reservation. To enforce the order was the duty of the garrison at Fort Yuma, which then consisted of only a few men, commanded by Major Dunn. While the garrison was sleeping, very early in the morning, a number of railroad engineers and construction men boarded a couple of flat cars and very quietly were pushed by an engine past the fort, over the river and upon solid ground on the Arizona side. Then the
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