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Willcox is a city in Cochise County, Arizona, United States. The city is located in the Sulphur Springs Valley, a flat and sparsely populated drainage basin dotted with seasonal lakes. The city is surrounded by Arizona's most prominent mountain ranges, including the Pinaleño Mountains and the Chiricahua Mountains.
The Battle of Apache Pass was fought in 1862 at Apache Pass, Arizona, in the United States, between Apache warriors and the Union volunteers of the California Column as it marched from California to capture Confederate Arizona and to reinforce New Mexico's Union army. It was one of the largest battles between the Americans and the Chiricahua during the Apache Wars.
Apache Pass, also known by its earlier Spanish name Puerto del Dado, is a historic mountain pass in the U.S. state of Arizona between the Dos Cabezas Mountains and Chiricahua Mountains at an elevation of 5,110 feet (1,560 m). It is approximately 20 miles (32 km) east-southeast of Willcox, Arizona, in Cochise County.
In the history of the American frontier, overland trails were built by pioneers throughout the 19th century and especially between 1829 and 1870 as an alternative to sea and railroad transport. These immigrants began to settle much of North America west of the Great Plains as part of the mass overland migrations of the mid-19th century. Settlers emigrating from the eastern United States were spurred by various motives, among them religious persecution and economic incentives, to move to destinations in the far west via routes including the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails. After the end of the Mexican–American War in 1849, vast new American conquests again enticed mass immigration. Legislation like the Donation Land Claim Act and significant events like the California Gold Rush further lured people to travel overland to the west.
The Willcox Playa is a large endorheic dry lake or sink (playa) adjacent to Willcox, Arizona in Cochise County, in the southeast corner of the state. It is part of the Sonoran Desert ecoregion and is the remnant of a Pleistocene era pluvial Lake Cochise. Portions of the dry lake bed have been used as a bombing range by the US military. Most of this area is currently used by the Electronic Proving Ground, based at Fort Huachuca. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1966 for its fossil pollen captured underground, the thousands of sandhill cranes that roost in the area and the largest diversity of tiger beetles in the United States.
The Sulphur Springs Valley is a valley in the eastern half of Cochise County, Arizona. The valley covers an approximated vertical rectangle west of the Chiricahua Mountains–Dos Cabezas Mountains complex. The Sulphur Springs Valley is the large flatland to the west.
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.
The historic 2,170-mile (3,490 km) Oregon Trail connected various towns along the Missouri River to Oregon's Willamette Valley. It was used during the 19th century by Great Plains pioneers who were seeking fertile land in the West and North.
San Simon River is an ephemeral river, or stream running through the San Simon Valley in Graham and Cochise County, Arizona and Hidalgo County, New Mexico. Its mouth is at its confluence with the Gila River at Safford in Graham County. Its source is located at 31°51′21″N109°01′27″W.
Nugents Pass or Nugent's Pass is a gap at an elevation of 4,593 feet (1,400 m) in Cochise County, Arizona. The pass was named for John Nugent, who provided notes of his journey with a party of Forty-Niners across what became the Tucson Cutoff to Lt. John G. Parke, on expedition to identify a feasible railroad route from the Pima Villages to the Rio Grande.
Stein's Pass, is a gap or mountain pass through the Peloncillo Mountains of Hidalgo County, New Mexico. The pass was named after United States Army Major Enoch Steen, who camped nearby in 1856, as he explored the recently acquired Gadsden Purchase. The pass is in the form of a canyon cut through the mountains through which Steins Creek flows to the west just west of the apex of the pass to the canyon mouth at 32°13′19″N109°01′48″W.
Cienega of San Simon, was a cienega, an area of springs 13 miles up the San Simon River from San Simon Station, in Cochise County, Arizona.
The Tucson Cutoff was a significant change in the route of the Southern Emigrant Trail. It became generally known after a party of Forty-Niners led by Colonel John Coffee Hays followed a route suggested to him by a Mexican Army officer as a shorter route than Cooke's Wagon Road which passed farther south to cross the mountains to the San Pedro River at Guadalupe Pass.
Tres Alamos Wash, an ephemeral stream tributary to the San Pedro River, in Cochise County, Arizona. It runs southwesterly to meet the San Pedro River, across the river from the former settlement of Tres Alamos, Arizona. Tres Alamos Wash passes east and northeastward between the Little Dragoon Mountains and Johnny Lyon Hills to where it arises in a valley east of those heights and west of Allen Flat and the Steele Hills. It has its source at 32°07′45″N110°02′59″W.
Fosters Hole or La Tinaja, was a waterhole on the original route of Cooke's Wagon Road in what is now Sierra County, New Mexico. It is located in narrow crevasse at the foot of a cliff in Jug Canyon that is difficult to spot, except from a few vantage points.
Cooke's Wagon Road or Cooke's Road was the first wagon road between the Rio Grande and the Colorado River to San Diego, through the Mexican provinces of Nuevo México, Chihuahua, Sonora and Alta California, established by Philip St. George Cooke and the Mormon Battalion, from October 19, 1846 to January 29, 1847 during the Mexican–American War. It became the first of the wagon routes between New Mexico and California that with subsequent modifications before and during the California Gold Rush eventually became known as the Southern Trail or Southern Emigrant Trail.
Mormon Road, also known to the 49ers as the Southern Route, of the California Trail in the Western United States, was a seasonal wagon road pioneered by a Mormon party from Salt Lake City, Utah led by Jefferson Hunt, that followed the route of Spanish explorers and the Old Spanish Trail across southwestern Utah, northwestern Arizona, southern Nevada and the Mojave Desert of California to Los Angeles in 1847. From 1855, it became a military and commercial wagon route between California and Utah, called the Los Angeles – Salt Lake Road. In later decades this route was variously called the "Old Mormon Road", the "Old Southern Road", or the "Immigrant Road" in California. In Utah, Arizona and Nevada it was known as the "California Road".
Whitmire Spring is a spring in Hidalgo County, New Mexico. Correctly named on the Playas Lake South U. S. topographic map, it is mistakenly called Whitmore Spring on the U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System. The spring was named after J. B. Whitmire, a rancher in the 1880s, owner of the Whitmire Ranch. Whitmire Spring lies at an elevation of 4,291 feet / 1,308 meters, on the west shore of Playas Lake, near the site of the Whitmire Ranch. Whitmire Spring is one of a number of springs and seeps bordering the western edge of Playas Lake. Its water has its source in the Animas Mountains nearby to the west.
Whitmire Pass is a gap in the Animas Mountains in Hidalgo County, New Mexico. It lies at an elevation of 4,977 feet . The pass was named after J. B. Whitmire, a rancher in the 1880s, owner of the Whitmire Ranch that lies to the east of the pass, on the west shore of Playas Lake, nearby Whitmire Spring. Whitmire Creek flows from the west slope of the pass, into Animas Creek in the Animas Valley. Another unnamed arroyo runs eastward down into the Playas Valley, toward Playas Lake at Whitmire Spring.
The Willcox AVA is an American Viticultural Area located in southeastern Arizona, centered around the city of Willcox where it is bisected by Interstate 10. Approximately 85% of wine grapes from Arizona are grown within the AVA boundaries. The AVA consists mostly of flat terrain at over 4,000 feet in elevation, including the Aravaipa Valley and much of Sulphur Springs Valley. It is bounded by the Chiricahua Mountains and Dos Cabezas Mountains to the east, the Pinaleño Mountains to the northeast, and the Dragoon Mountains to the west. Sixty miles (97 km) to the southwest is the Sonoita AVA, and the Mimbres Valley AVA is 120 miles (190 km) to the east in New Mexico. The AVA is one of the three major centers of viticulture in Arizona, along with Sonoita and the Verde Valley in central Arizona. Just east of the AVA are Fort Bowie National Historic Site, Chiricahua National Monument, and Coronado National Forest.
References
- ↑ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Croton Springs
- ↑ Report of Captain A. A. Humphreys, Topographical Engineers, Upon the progress of the Pacific Railroad Expeditions and Surveys, Report of the Secretary of War, Dec. 1, 1856, Message from the President of the United States to the Two Houses of Congress at the Commencement of the third session of the 34th Congress, 34th Congress, 3d Session, House of Representatives, Ex. Doc. No.1, Vol. II, Cornelius Wendell, Washington, 1856, pp. 206–09
- ↑ Richard J. Hinton, The Handbook to Arizona: Its Resources, History, Towns, Mines, Ruins, and Scenery, Payot, Upham & Company, San Francisco, 1878, pp. xix–xx, xxxi
Coordinates: 32°09′46″N109°56′02″W / 32.16278°N 109.93389°W