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 principal town. Most of the land is owned by the Saints, who control, as well, a dozen small canals. 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 assumed 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 canal, 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.

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 passing into the Gila Valley through a rocky canyon, "a terrible place, almost impassable, the dread of all who travel this way." The same road is very little better to this day.

At one point was passed 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 passed, 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.