The Bradshaw Trail is a historic overland stage route and ancient Indian trail in the Colorado Desert of Southern California. In 1862, William Bradshaw established the first road across Riverside County to the Colorado River as an overland stage route. Starting in San Bernardino, the trail was heavily traveled from 1862 to 1877, transporting miners and other passengers to the gold fields at La Paz, Arizona. An approximately 70-mile recreational trail (110km) along the route is maintained by the Riverside County Transportation Department.
This route across the Colorado Desert was part of an Indigenous trade network. It was used by Native peoples including the Cahuilla, Halchidhoma, Maricopa, and others, who knew the locations of springs and water holes and traveled between what’s now Southern California and the Colorado River region. Historians named the ancient trade route the Cahuilla-Halchidhoma Trail.
The current trail is a graded dirt road, that traverses southeastern Riverside County, and a minimal part of Imperial County, Western trailhead beginning roughly 3 miles (4.8km) east of Dos Palmas Oasis and Eastern terminus about 4 miles (6.4km) north-west of Palo Verde, CA for a total of 70 miles (110km).
History
In 1821, José Cocomaricopa, a Maricopa leader, traveled on foot from the Gila-Colorado River region to Mission San Gabriel near the Pueblo de Los Angeles with a small group of companions. When they arrived, he told the missionaries that they had covered the distance from the Colorado River to San Gabriel in six days, following an existing Native trail across the desert. They said they came to trade, showing that Indigenous traders were already using this overland route between the Colorado River area and coastal California before Mexican and later U.S. expeditions formally opened it.
In December 1823, under orders from Emperor Iturbide in Mexico City, Captain José Romero led an expedition from Mission San Gabriel, accompanied by Mexican soldiers, & documented by diarist José María Estudillo, to find an overland route from San Gabriel to Tucson, after a Yuma Crossing Massacre in 1781 closed the alternate southern trail. Retracing José Cocomaricopa's steps they tracked east through the San Gorgonio Pass into the Colorado Desert and were escorted by Cahuillas following the Cahuilla–Halchidhoma trail, to Dos Palmas Oasis. From there they attempted to continue east toward the Colorado River, but their two Indian guides unfamiliar with the trail's eastern section in the Chuckwalla Mountain range, led them astray north of the trail near Palen Lake, forcing the party to turn back without reaching Tucson on that attempt. Two years later in December 1825, Romero completed the expedition. Romero effectively re-established the Sonora to Alta California land connection and set the stage for the route’s use as a mail and courier path between the two Mexican provinces.
In the year 1862, the route was blazed by William D. Bradshaw for continued use.[1] The Halchidhoma tribe & José Cabazon leader of the Cahuillas showed Bradshaw the ancient route. He renamed it to Bradshaw Road it was referred to other names like Road to La Paz,[2] or Gold Road,[3] A former forty-niner, Bradshaw knew that the northern gold mines were rapidly becoming exhausted and that the flood of refugees from the area would need a more direct trail from the south across the desert to the new strike at La Paz. Without a direct trail, it would be necessary to travel a great distance southeast to Yuma, then north up the river to La Paz. Bradshaw was also aware of the financial possibilities that could be found in a gold boomtown. In May 1862, Bradshaw and eight other men set out to find a direct route to La Paz.
Originally 180 miles (290km) long, the western trailhead began east of San Bernardino in the San Gorgonio Pass. Bradshaw and his party traveled southeast through Agua Caliente, now Palm Springs, and then South to a village where the Torres Martinez Indian Reservation is now located. There Bradshaw was befriended by Cabazon, a chief of the Cahuilla Indians of the Salton Sink, and a Maricopa from Arizona who was visiting the Cahuilla villages. They provided Bradshaw with the knowledge of the route of their ancient trade route through the Colorado Desert, including the location of springs and water holes.
Armed with this information, Bradshaw traveled eastward near present-day Mecca at the northern tip of the Salton Sink, to Bitter Spring at the foothills of the Orocopia Mountains and on 5 miles to an existing stage stop called "Dos Palmas Spring." Leaving Dos Palmas, the men continued through the pass eastward between the Orocopia and Chocolate mountain ranges, briefly skirting the southern end of the Chuckwalla range, crossed through a gap in the Mule Mountains and reaching the Palo Verde Valley two miles southwest of the modern community of Ripley. Despite the fact that the trail crossed mostly barren desert, water was reasonably plentiful with water holes found at roughly 30-mile (48km) intervals at Canyon Springs, Tabaseca Tanks, Chuckwalla Springs and Mule Spring.
Crossing the Palo Verde Valley to the northwest, they crossed a slough of the Colorado River called Laguna, and Willow Springs Station, to Bradshaw's Ferry, the crossing point of the Colorado River to Mineral City east of what is now Blythe. Once they crossed the Colorado River, the party rode upstream for approximately five miles to the gold fields of La Paz.
Between 1862 and 1877, the Bradshaw Trail was the main stagecoach and wagon route between Southern California and the gold fields of La Paz and other places in western Arizona. The La Paz - Wikenburg Road connected the Bradshaw Trail to the interior of Arizona Territory and the mining districts there. Olive City was the first Bradshaw ferry crossing for the trail from 1862 to 1864. With the founding of Mineral City, which became the new Bradshaw ferry crossing, Mineral City became part of Ehrenberg when it was established in 1866. From 1870 the trail ended and connected with the toll road to Wickenburg at Ehrenberg as La Paz, became a ghost town when its mines played out.
Contemporary route
Desert flora of the trail, August 2015.
The western start of the current Bradshaw trail begins, 10 miles (16km) east of North Shore, California adjacent to the trail's historic stagecoach station of Dos Palmas. The remaining fragment mostly passes through Public land (Chuckwalla National Monument), and offers sweeping views of the Orocopia, Chuckwalla, and Mule Mountains. The extreme eastern end of the trail at Ripley, California, intersects 30th Avenue, 2 miles (3.2km) west of SR78. Four-wheel-drive vehicles are recommended because of sections of soft sand. No amenities may be found on the trail itself.
↑Wheeler; Distances between stations and watering places on the Bradshaw Trail taken from this survey map.
1234New Mexico Territory prior to February 24, 1863.
Further reading
Johnston, Francis J. (1977). The Bradshaw Trail. Riverside, CA: Riverside Historical Commission Press. p.215.
Reviewed in Polich, John L. (Summer 1978). Strong, Douglas S (ed.). "The Bradshaw Trail". San Diego Historical Society Quarterly. 24 (3).
Lech, Steve (2012). For Tourism and a Good Night's Sleep: J. Win Wilson, Wilson Howell, and the Beginnings of the Pines-to-Palms Highway. Riverside, CA: Steve Lech. p.164. ISBN978-0-9837500-1-7. (for more information about Dos Palmas Spring)
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