At the time of the California gold rush it took the Argonauts coming to SF several months to make the overland voyage from the Mississippi river to California. The route was generally the northern Oregon trail, but many travelers (and the number is disputed, but certainly in the thousands) came over a southern route more or less following the old Spanish trading route from St. Louis to Santa Fe. It did not take long for the necessity of a quicker means of travel between the United States and the new state of California to become essential.
This morning I am in Phoenix for some spring training baseball games, and I am remembering when I was here exploring the Butterfield route. So I went down to the lobby of the hotel where they had the usual display of tourism guides and found three historic site brochures: Tubac, the site of a 1752 Spanish presidio established as Spain extended its frontier across Texas and the Southwest; The Juan Bautista De Anza Historic Trail, the route covered by the Anza expedition which brought the first Spanish settlers to California; and an "Apache Trail" tourist map and brochure which guides the tourist to area east of Phoenix. There was nothing that I could see in the literature on display that spoke of the Butterfield Stage line.
As I recall, the stage line went on a somewhat more southerly route which does not surprise me. The route parallels the present day Interstate 10 through Tucson and Yuma. U.S. Army Captain John Bourke, writing of his time in Arizona around 1870, spoke of Tucson as a rather primitive place. "Street and pavements there were none; lamps were unheard of; drainage was not deemed necessary" and water was obtained either from wells that soon became "impregnated with 'alkali'" or from "the old Mexican who hauled it in barrels in a dilapidated cart from the cool spring on the bishop's farm." And yet Tucson was where the headquarters of the US government in Arizona was at the time.(Bourke, John, On The Border With Crook, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891, Kindle edition)
When we drove into Tucson on our Butterfield route exploration it was raining so hard that the problem of drainage was acute - but that of course is an unusual occurrence in Tucson. But we were on the right trail. I don't recall where we stayed that night, but our plans to camp out were cancelled, We continued on the next day. I remember that we searched for Butterfield on the map, but I don't recall (and I doubt) that we used Google. We probably had a road map and I remember finding a Butterfield Rd. and we went there and it was in a business/warehouse district that was not very interesting. Now when I Google Butterfield Rd in Tucson there are a number of hits and there seems to be a lot of development on Butterfield Rd.
We were following Interstate 10 after we got out of California, and we took that road out of Tucson and headed toward New Mexico. The map in the Anza trail brochure I picked up shows that just south of Tucson, there is a fork in the road where IS 10 turns to the east and Interstate 19 turns south toward the Mexico border. IS 19 follows the route of the Anza party as they left Mexico and headed north up to the area that is now known as Casa Grande a few miles south oh Phoenix.
Following IS19 south would have taken us to the Tumacàcori National Historic Park which is just a few miles north of the border. I do recall going to the town my father was born in, Continental a few miles east of IS19 about midway between Tucson and the Tumacàcori Park. I had been there as a child and the place was much different. The company town, where my grandparents lived, was gone and the developed area was adobe style modern houses - very nice but kind of grotesque. I guess if we had gone a few miles further on we might have found the site of Tumacàcori and its historical buildings. But the brochure seems to indicate that it has been at least partially restored, and certainly deserves a visit. Perhaps if I return via the southern route from Kansas later this summer I can make that detour, then return along the Anza trail.
Reminiscences to be continued. . .
