Southern Emigrant Trail

Southern Emigrant Trail, also known as the Gila Trail, the Kearny 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.

In October 1846, General Stephen Watts Kearny and his dragoons with their scout Kit Carson found the route over the mountains from the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro on the Rio Grande, via the Santa Rita mines to the Gila River which he then followed to the Colorado River, at the Yuma Crossing where he crossed the river and then the Colorado Desert to Southern California. One month later, Colonel Philip St. George Cooke and the Mormon Battalion with wagons Kearny could not take across the mountains of New Mexico, followed a route from what later became the site of Fort Thorn on the Rio Grande, that reached far southwest to just south of the current border with Mexico then west before turning northward via the San Pedro River, then west to Tucson before linking up with and following Kearny’s route at the Pima Villages on the Gila River to Yuma Crossing establishing the first southern wagon road to California. This wagon route became known as Cooke's Road, or Sonora Road, as much of the central part of the route passed through what was then the northern frontier of the state of Sonora, Mexico.

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