On the Road in Old Arizona

Traveling up the Colorado River aboard the steamboat Gila in August, 1874, Army wife Martha Summerhayes of New England could think of little beyond her own discomfort: "The scenery was grand," she observed, "and we could have had a merry time but for the awful heat, which destroyed both our good looks and our tempers."

Mrs. Summerhayes' reaction was typical of travelers in Arizona before the coming of the railroads. Because rail construction did not commence until the 1880s, more uncomfortable forms of transportation wagon train, stagecoach, and steamboat sufficed for decades.

Until the coming of the Europeans, the native peoples traveled exclusively on foot. The Spaniards brought horses, oxen, and mules, relying for centuries on these animals to move them about the Southwest. Teams and wagons were used commonly to connect Tucson with Sonora, Mexico, but functional and half fed, and living upon wild animals, we have discovered and made a road of great value to our country." Nonetheless, travel in such a desolate country proved to be extremely arduous. One obviously unhappy man called Cooke's road "the worst place for wagons to travel I ever saw."

As if the topography was not enough of a hazard, herds of mean-spirited wild cattle roamed southern Arizona, occasionally attacking wagon trains and killing draft animals. The Mormon Battalion once was attacked by a group of angry feral bulls in a skirmish forever known as the "Battle of the Bulls."

Under such circumstances, both men and animals suffered, particularly in the arid country between Tucson and the Gila River. John Durivage recalled that this portion of the trip very nearly killed him: "Until one has crossed a barren d desert without food or water under a burning tropical sun at a rate of three miles an hour, he can form no conception of what misery truly is." Some travelers on the southern trail were so dispirited by the slow pace that they resorted to rafting down the Gila. Such experiments, however, were abandoned after it was discovered that "boats" required more time to reach Yuma than did wagons.

THE TRIALS OF TRAVEL IN EARLY ARIZONA

Roads hardly existed elsewhere. The presence of Americans and the development of mining ventures caused widely scattered settlements to appear. In the late 1840s, gold fever struck California, prompting thousands of emigrants to head west across the southern Gila River route. To reach their destination, these "argonauts" found it necessary to traverse Arizona. Thus, from the less demanding days of Spanish and Mexican occupation, Arizona suddenly needed a reliable transportation network to handle thousands of people on the move.

Not all travelers chose to travel with organized groups. One enterprising German emigrant decided to go west on his own by horseback, a trip that proved rather unpleasant when he was attacked by Indians. Scared but uninjured, he vowed that if the Indians did catch him, he would "dismount and fight to the last, hand to hand, and sell my life as dearly as I can."

Most of the early travelers provided for themselves. The U.S. Army, beginning with the Mormon Battalion in 1847, relied upon horses and mule-drawn wagons to open the first practical wagon road across the southern deserts.

Once soldiers were stationed in Arizona, travel accommodations improved. With escorts available and roads somewhat better, buckboards and carriages became commonplace. Martha Summerhayes usually rode in a "Dougherty wagon, or in common Army parlance, an ambulance. This practical frontier vehicle had a large body with two seats facing each other and a seat outside for the driver. The inside of the wagon could be closed if desired by canvas sides and back which were rolled up and down." An ambulance might have given Mrs. Summerhayes privacy, but it nevertheless proved dusty and bumpy and hot. On a trip from Camp Apache to Prescott, she observed that "the jolting threw us by turns against the sides of the ambulance, and we all got some rather bad bruises." Others reported similar experiences. Army Lt. John G. Bourke's trip in a buckboard featured cold, hunger, and terror. The ever-present cacti caused several runaways "when the animals had struck against the adhering thorns of the perteferous 'cholla.'" Nevertheless, buckboards and ambulances made touring Arizona more practicable. Josephine Clifford, the wife of an Army officer, rather enjoyed her desert adventures by wagon. "My ambulance was of such ample dimensions," she wrote, "that it was easily turned into a sleeping-apartment for the night." Drawn by four large mules, this vehicle enabled Mrs. Clifford to tour southern Arizona in a style befitting a lady. During the late 1850s, the Army attempted an exotic transportation experiment in hope of finding a better way to move men and materials across the Southwest. The U.S. Camel Corps was a favorite idea of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, who envisioned camels as the answer to transportation needs in the parched Southwest.

Gen. Philip St. George Cooke, commander of the battalion, recalled both the difficulties and the significance of his trip: "Marching half naked Davis purchased 77 camels in 1856-57. These animals could carry loads up to 600 pounds, were comfortable in any terrain, drank little water, and ate plants shunned by other animals. Twenty-five of these remarkable beasts were assigned to Lt. Edward F. Beale, who in 1857 led an expedition to construct a wagon road from New Mexico to California. His camels exceeded expectations as they trekked across northern Arizona. (See Arizona Highways, July '84.) Writing from a camp near present-day Holbrook, he remarked that "certainly there never was anything so patient and enduring and so little troublesome as this noble animal." Unfortunately Beale's enthusiasm was not always shared by his men. Camels hardly endeared themselves to dedicated horse soldiers: horses and mules fled in terror, creating havoc with teamsters and infuriating packers. In addition, the camels were noisy, ornery, spat incessantly, and emitted an odor so obnoxious that one expert advised handlers to "pitch your tent as far from your camel as you dare, and, if there be a breeze, to the windward." Most troopers hated the beasts.

THE TRIALS OF TRAVEL ARIZONA'S EARLY ECONOMY AND INDUSTRIAL BUT MODERN TECHNOLOGY ASSURED THAT MULE-DRAWN

Because of the Army's unwillingness to accept this unconventional means of transport, Beale's experiment was not repeated. More conventional modes of travel seemed better suited for Arizona. As people entered the Territory, commercial travel firms began to emerge, and water transportation played a major role. Until well after the coming of the railroad, a fleet of small stern-wheeled steamboats traversed the Colorado River, supplying mining camps and Army posts from Yuma to Fort Mohave. People destined for the interior also went upriver before heading overland to Prescott. Although equipped with some comforts, the riverboats were nonetheless miserable and dangerous. German adventurer Heinrich Baldwin Möllhausen, who traveled with a government exploring party in 1857-58, commented on travel hazards aboard his vessel. The woodburner continually belched a shower of sparks and embers, at one point prompting a passenger to cry out, "Someone's on fire!" Then things began to happen fast: "Suddenly someone yells with a burst of laughter to the very person who first sounded the fire alarm, Your own head's on fire!' His startled hand grabs for the only headgear that he has brought with him, which in the full sense of the word has become topless . . . ." (See Arizona Highways, August '84.) The well-traveled Martha Summerhayes was thoroughly unhappy with her boat trips. Her first upriver adventure came at the peak of summer heat: "I had never felt such heat, and no one else ever had or has since. The days were interminable." Meals in the dining room provided no relief. She noted, "The metal handles of the knives (PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 20 and 21) Travel by stagecoach was a popular, if not altogether comfortable, mode of transportation in early-day Arizona even after the arrival of the railroad and into the early 1900s. NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY, FLAGSTAFF (RIGHT) Frontier donkeys and mules were ubiquitous, strong, dependable, and frightened of nothing except the Camel Corps. ARIZONA LIBRARY, ARCHIVES AND PUBLIC RECORDS were uncomfortably warm to the touch; and even the wooden arms of the chairs felt as if they were slowly igniting."

Another steamboat passenger, Swiss-born Francis Berton, proved more forbearing, remarking that the food was tolerable, the air refreshing, and the scenery of interest. Nevertheless, danger and delay took its toll. His boat, the Cocopah, continually lodged on sandbars. "Here we are, stuck again," Berton wrote, "and God knows when we will get out of it." Under such circumstances, he reported, the journey up the Colorado "has no attraction for me."

If river travel was unpleasant, much the same could be said for stagecoaches, Arizona's most common form of travel. Stagecoaches came early to Arizona, and they lasted until after the turn of the century. Even after railroads connected the major towns, coaches were used to reach remote sites.

Sometimes regarded as a "horse-drawn hell," the first regular stagecoach service appeared in Arizona in 1857 as part of a line connecting San Antonio, Texas, with San Diego, California. Named the "Jackass Mail" because passengers were forced to ride mules across the sand dunes west of Yuma,

IN EARLY ARIZONA

this enterprise quickly collapsed, replaced by the famous Butterfield Stage. Although stage service was disrupted during the Civil War, regular connections resumed after the conflict.

All agreed that stage travel was uncomfortable. Most passengers naturally preferred short trips. In a territory as large as Arizona, however, wayfarers frequently had to suffer through extended journeys. English journalist William Talleck, who rode a coach across Arizona in 1861, experienced "days of tremendous mountain jolting." His discomfort was exacerbated by the number of people crammed into his coach. The average stage held nine passengers, but as Talleck reported, "by popular permission, an American vehicle is never 'full,' there always being room for 'one more.'" Another traveler wrote that a passenger might find "a fat man on one side, a poor widow on the other, a baby in your lap, a bandbox over your head and three or four persons leaning against your knees."

Stage trips also were dangerous. One correspondent described passage over a mountain road: "And now fear began to creep, or rather rush upon me. Suppose one of the leaders, by a

DEVELOPMENT DEPENDED ON FREIGHT WAGONS, WAGONS, STAGECOACHES, AND STEAMBOATS BECOME OBSOLETE.

misstep, had fallen, nothing could have saved us from rushing down that awful precipice to certain destruction." Another terrified traveler noted that "to feel yourself bounced now on the hard seat, now against the roof, and now against the side of the wagon was no joke."

Despite fear, lack of sleep, and bruising, most passengers safely reached their destination. However, those traveling long distances faced one more threat: meals at a stage station. Designed as stops to change teams, some stations offered food. These "feasts" generally consisted of boiled salt pork, with "chiles and water added to the fat for gravy." Wayfarers unlucky enough to eat such chow reacted much the same. "The bill of fare, outside of an occasional item of game, was abominable, consisting of chicory coffee sweetened with molasses or brown sugar; fried pork floating in grease; and corn bread . . . soggy and unpalatable." Yet even here a spirit of optimism might appear. One man thought his meal better than "could be expected so far from civilized districts." Another called his breakfast "fit for a king."

As Arizona developed economically, it became necessary to move a substantial amount of freight and merchandise. Eventually a large freighting system grew up, employing hundreds of wagons, thousands of mules, oxen, horses, and scores of team-sters or "bull whackers." Because of its proximity to supply bases in Sonora, Tucson became the center of freighting activities. Dominated by the firm of Tully and Ochoa, Tucson served as a hub for wagon trains connecting the mines with Sea of Cortes ports and eastern terminals. In the 1870s, more men were employed in freighting than any other occupation except mining.

Prior to 1880, all mining and smelting equipment was brought in by wagon. Trains consisting of dozens of wagons crisscrossed Arizona daily. Even the territory's first narrow-gauge locomotive, built in Pittsburgh for the Coronado Railroad at Clifton, entered Arizona by wagon. Conversely, tons of copper, gold, and silver went to market the same way. Indeed, modern technology assured that mule-drawn wagons, stagecoaches, and steamboats become obsolete.

Today one may look back on such means of travel as romantic and quaint. Yet we need to keep things in perspective. Most 19thcentury Arizonans would have agreed with one wayfarer whose trip was so unpleasant that she remarked, "I made an inward vow that nothing would ever force me into such a situation again."