Mormon Settlement in Arizona Part 26

"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, furnishing 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, furnishing 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.

One of the very earliest valley residents was D.W. Wickersham, who wrote the Author lately, covering his early experiences. To later serve as the first teacher, he arrived in Safford the summer of 1876, there finding Joshua E. Bailey and Hiram Kennedy, who had come from Gila Bend. Bailey he considers the founder of Safford and believes it was he who named the settlement. Both Bailey and Kennedy came with California troops during the Civil War. The former died in Michigan and Kennedy was murdered in Safford in 1877. Others of the early settlers were Wm. A. Gillespie, John Glasby, John Conley, A.F. Perigo, Edw. E. Tuttle and E.T. Ijams.

In 1876 appeared Isador E. Solomon, who for many years occupied a leading position. He came primarily to burn charcoal for the rude adobe furnaces that had been erected by the Lesynzskys to smelt the free ores of the famous Longfellow mine in Chase Creek Canyon, a few miles above Clifton.

For charcoal Solomon found abundant material in an almost unbroken mesquite forest that stretched for many miles along the river. Solomon purchased a road house and small store that had been established near Pueblo Viejo by one Munson, and the place soon became a trading post for a large extent of country, its importance increasing with the development of the great mining region around Globe. I.E. Solomon still is living, an honored resident of Tucson, his children prominent in the business affairs of the State. Solomonville was so named, in 1878, by none other than Bill Kirkland, who raised the American flag in Tucson in 1856 and who, for a while, carried mail from Fort Thomas to Clifton.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOUTHEASTERN ARIZONA. The Salt, San Pedro and Gila Valleys and Routes of travel]

Apostle Erastus Snow appears to have been the first of the Mormon faith to cross this Gila Valley region. His party arrived on the San Pedro River, October 6, 1878. The most easterly point reached in the Gila Valley was at old Camp Goodwin, not far from the present railroad station of Fort Thomas and at the extreme western or lower end of the present farmed area. It would require a separate volume to follow Apostle Erastus Snow on his journeyings through the Southwest, where he appears to have served as a veritable inspector-general for his Church.

On the 1878 trip, L. John Nuttall of Snow's company, writes of pa.s.sing into the Gila Valley through a rocky canyon, "a terrible place, almost impa.s.sable, the dread of all who travel this way." The same road is very little better to this day.

At one point was pa.s.sed a ridge known as Postoffice Hill, where was found the grave of a white man, killed several years before by Apaches. Every time an Apache pa.s.sed, he put a rock on the grave mound, at that time about twenty feet square at the base and four feet high. The travelers added another rock, on the principle of, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

Mormon Location at Smithville

The Mormon settlement of the Gila Valley was one of the few made without particular and direct instruction from the general Church authorities. It was caused, primarily, by trouble over the land tenure at Forest Dale, in the mountains to the northward, where settlers, at first permitted, even encouraged by the reservation authorities, finally were advised that they were on Indian land and would have to move. The first question before the colonists immediately became where they should find a new abiding place.

All of them had come from the northward, seeking a better location than afforded along the Little Colorado River or in the mountain settlements.

So there was determination to see what could be found in the way of farming land on the Gila, to the southward.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TEEPLES HOME, FIRST HOUSE IN PIMA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIRST SCHOOL HOUSE AT SAFFORD]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GILA NORMAL COLLEGE AT THATCHER]

In February, 1879, an expedition started over the hills to view the valley of the Gila. It included W.R. Teeples, John Wm. Tanner, Ben Pierce and Hyrum Weech. The last-named told that the party looked over the country and finally selected a location for a town. He wrote, "We traveled from one end of the valley to the other on both sides of the river, looking for the best place to take out a ditch, because we had very little means and could not go to large expense. This (near the location of Smithville, later known as Pima) seemed to be about the easiest place on the river to take out water, so we decided on making the location here."

The Smithville ditch was on the basis of prior location by Gillespie and was extended to cover the Mormon land in 1880. Somewhat higher was the Central ditch, which had been built several years before as far down as the later site of Thatcher and which was extended above Pima in 1882.

Somewhat of a Samaritan was found on the ground in one Markham, from Oregon, from whom were hired a team and wagon and who refused to take any pay. With a pocket compa.s.s, Smithville was laid out. The settlement could not be scattered, because Indians and outlaws threatened. Foundations were laid on sixteen corners, each under the name of one of the families expected to come from the north.

The pioneer party then made close investigation of the valley, traveling up the Gila into New Mexico, and viewed the country around Clifton and along the Blue and Black Rivers. The whole trip took about a month.

The report was, "that the country looked good for stock raising and farming." On March 16, at Moses Cluff's camp, the proposed migration was approved by Stake President Jesse N. Smith, who appointed Jos. K. Rogers to lead it. In the first company were Rogers, Teeples, Weech, Henry D.

Dall, William Thompson and the families of all except Weech and Dall. To these were added John and Thomas Sessions and Earlton Haws, making 28 in all. Arrival was on April 8, 1879. The Cluffs (three families) came very soon after the first party. In a later migration came Samuel Curtis, Heber Reed, Edgar Sessions and William Asay.

E.G. Curtis, one of the earliest of the settlers, told that in pa.s.sing Fort Thomas in March, "the country is found entirely covered with poppies, one of the most beautiful sights I ever expect to see. The gra.s.s was high and when the wind would blow it down in great waves, you could see great bunches of antelope."

A Second Party Locates at Graham

In the Church history of Graham Ward is found additional data concerning the early Gila Valley settlement. It is told that, "the settlers of Brigham City on the Little Colorado, getting discouraged because of frequent failures of crops and poor prospects, sent explorers out to look for new locations. Two went to the San Juan country in Utah, two to the Salt River Valley and three, George Lake, Andrew Anderson and George Skinner, to the Gila River." The journey was via Fort Apache, the arrival at Smithville being in the latter part of November, 1880. At the Graham settlement there was purchase of a water ditch and a quit-claim deed to four quarter-sections of land that had been farmed by non-Mormons. The record recites, "it was merely a rustlers' ranch, possessed by horsethieves and speculators who had a small house on it, for which the brethren paid about $1800, in cows valued at $35 per head."

Lake remained in the valley. Anderson and Skinner returned in December to Brigham City, where the authorities of the United Order accepted the purchase. Anderson and Skinner started again for the Gila, accompanied by their families, by Moses M. Curtis and William Hawkins and their families and a number of unmarried men, taking with them seed grain, farming implements, cows, sheep and other animals. Transportation was by ox teams. Christmas Day was spent at St. Joseph on the Little Colorado and New Year at Showlow, arrival on the Gila being in January. Lake, in the meantime, had been joined by Jorgen Jorgensen and Jerome J. Adams, the two who had been sent to the Salt River Valley.

The new arrivals at once set at work, clearing their lands and putting in grain, raising good crops. The manual labor, of the hardest sort, was performed under the conditions of the United Order and on a diet princ.i.p.ally of bread and beans. The sheep band was turned over to the Church, as profits of the Order, and the wheat and other products were divided according to the number of families and the number of persons. A stockade fort was built, but the homes for months consisted of sheds or tents and even of the wagons. In 1884, on the newly-surveyed townsite of Graham, was built a meeting house, called the "factory house," with mesquite posts and dirt roof and with walls only of heavy unbleached muslin, which appears to have been called "factory."