The Gila Trail...

[5fish]

The Gila Trail was the southern way to California and open year around, no Donner party stories.

On the Old Gila Trail

Over the years—and we’re talking many years—it went by several names: Sonora Road, Kearny Trail, Gila Trail, Butterfield Stage Trail, Old Gila Trail, Fort

truewestmagazine.com

snip...

Over the years—and we’re talking many years—it went by several names: Sonora Road, Kearny Trail, Gila Trail, Butterfield Stage Trail, Old Gila Trail, Fort Yuma Road, Southern Route, Emigrant Road/Trail, Southern Emigrant Trail. And, for a while, it probably had no name at all.

snip...

This being desert, the trail followed mostly rivers—the San Pedro, the Gila. It stretched from Texas, or Santa Fe, New Mexico (that one became Cooke’s Road when Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke led wagons and the Mormon Battalion south and west during the Mexican-American War), traversed southern New Mexico and southern Arizona, and then on to San Diego or Los Angeles.

snip...

After the Civil War, cattle crossed the Gila. Indians had ended most ranchers’ dreams in the 1850s, but, Faulk wrote, “with the return of soldiers and the creation of reservations, ranching could spread once again—for both soldiers and Indians, along with the miners, had to be fed.”

snip... the end... Gold in !870...

And into California. To Julian, where in 1869 a former slave discovered gold in the Cuyamaca Mountains and set off another California gold rush, and where Joseph Treshil’s blacksmith shop has been turned into the Julian Pioneer Museum. And to San Diego, where Wyatt Earp ran three gambling halls in what is now the city’s historic and funky Gaslamp Quarter. The towns along the Old Gila have changed, of course. Some remain dusty brown, but most are cosmopolitan. Yet as Faulk once lamented, youngsters should “know that the spark of the telegraph and the lonesome whistle of a freight train at midnight are as much a part of the Southwest as is the asphalt and concrete of a superhighway. These are what made possible both the present and the future.”

 

[5fish]

Here is Wiki...

Southern Emigrant Trail - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

snip...

Southern Emigrant Trail, also known as the Gila Trail, the Kearny Trail, Southern Trail and the Butterfield Stage Trail, was a major land route for immigration into California from the eastern United States that followed the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico during the California Gold Rush. Unlike the more northern routes, pioneer wagons could travel year round, mountain passes not being blocked by snows, however it had the disadvantage of summer heat and lack of water in the desert regions through which it passed in New Mexico Territory and the Colorado Desert of California. Subsequently, it was a route of travel and commerce between the eastern United States and California. Many herds of cattle and sheep were driven along this route and it was followed by the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line in 1857-1858 and then the Butterfield Overland Mail from 1858 - 1861.

 

[5fish]

Here a book about about Isaac Duval and the Texas Argonauts... It was written by a man on this expedition to the Gold Fields... one the few with accounts along the southern trail... I notice in older books Isaac Harding Duval's name is in the title too... He was the leader of this expedition... Harris just wrote about it...



summary:

The Texas Argonauts were on the march west as early as January, 1849 -a remarkable circumstance when it is recalled that the famous tea caddy of gold dust which set off the gold fever in the "States" did not reach Washington, D. C, until December 7, 1848. From Brownsville, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio, the dusty trails of the gold seekers crisscrossed through West Texas and northern Mexico. Among the travelers was young attorney Benjamin Butler Harris, who joined the fifty-two man Duval party, one of the earliest emigrant parties to head for California from Texas. Traveling by saddle horse and pack mule, the Duval group was probably the first to operate a ferry on the Colorado River, although the boat was only a hastily caulked wagon bed. The overland journey was fraught with interest and peril-Apache alarms and skirmishes adding to the hazards of nature -but the party reached the mines on September 29, 1849. Here, published for the first time, are Harris's colorful reminiscences of his experiences on the Gila Trail and in the Mother Lode mining camps in 1849-50. Harris was intelligent, observant, and gifted with a sense of humor, and his account of the trail and the feverish activities of the early mining camps makes first-rate reading for all Western Americana enthusiasts. There is a bonus, too, in the new material presented on some of the most interesting and important men of California's early days, among them Major James D. Savage, Judge David S. Terry, and John Joel Glanton. About the author and editor: The sixth of twelve children in a prominent Virginia family, Benjamin Butler Harris graduated from Nashville University, Tennessee, read law and went to East Texas to seek his fortune. Soon convinced that the East Texas climate, with its "Brazos fever," would do him in if he remained, he decided to take his law practice and his bad liver farther west-hence this account. Richard H. Dillon who has provided the superb introduction and informative notes for Harris's account, is a historian of note and author of Embarcadero an excellent story of the port of pre-fire San Francisco. "