Tucson Cutoff

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.

The Tucson Cutoff ran from Ojo de Ynez on Cooke's Wagon Road on the southeast side of the Big Burro Mountains to the southwest to a spring and through a pass in the Pyramid Mountains south of today's Lordsburg. Descending to the southwest onto the playa in the north end of Animas Valley the cutoff route passed to the west through Stein's Pass, then southwest of its mouth to the Cienega of San Simon on the San Simon River. The cutoff then ran west through Puerto del Dado, from there it crossed the middle Sulphur Springs Valley and Willcox Playa to Croton Springs. From there it ran to Nugent’s Pass, down Tres Alamos Wash to the lower crossing of the San Pedro River near Tres Alamos. From Tres Alamos the route led southwest to a waterhole on Cooke's Wagon Road on Mescal Arroyo (just west of modern Mescal) where it linked up again with Cooke's route to Tucson.