Gila River

and reinforcements which had come from the presidios of Fronteras, Santa Cruz, and Tubac to return to their posts.

Junction with Kearney's Trail Renewing its journey, the command, in the course of three days, by hard marching, reached the Gila River and intersected the route followed by General Kearney 474 miles from the point at which they left it in the valley of the Rio Grande.

the southern pacific railroad transverses practically the route of the battalion between these two points colonel cook made a map of this part of the battalion's journey published in his book and referring to it in connection with the southern pacific railroad he says a new administration in which southern interests prevailed with the great problem of the practicability and best location of a pacific railroad under investigation had the map of this wagon route before them with its continuance to the west and perceived that it gave exactly the solution of its unknown element that a southern route would avoid both the rocky mountains and sierra nevada with her snows and would meet no obstacle in this great interval the new gadsden treaty was the result it was signed december thirtieth eighteen fifty three the march down the gila following more or less the windings of the gila the way made difficult from alternating stretches of deep sand and miry clay the command arrived at the junction of the gila with the colorado on the eighth of january An attempt at the shipment of part of the command's provisions down the river on a flatboat proved a sad failure and ended in considerable loss.

The scheme was Colonel Cook's.

And then agriculture drives the action.

The Colorado and the Gila River systems support the extensive irrigated farm counties, grain fields.

Okay, so a lot of dairy stuff, nearby desert washes, food.

Yeah, they got a lot.

Long before Phoenix was Phoenix, rising out of the sun, tens of thousands of people lived in that valley.

And depending upon which archeologic estimates you use, the population of Greater Phoenix Basin at its height may have approached 100,000 people, supported by an enormous system of canals along the Salt and Gila Rivers.

These people moved water through the desert without electric pumps, bulldozers, steel shovels, or somebody from the city of Phoenix demanding a permit.

They had engineering, they had agriculture, they had communities that lasted for generations.

One is called the San Carlos Lake.

The other that feeds it, the Gila River.

The Gila River, and it would not be a surprise to regular listeners, is a tributary of the Colorado River.

And I'm going to tell you right now that most of the Gila never makes it to the Colorado.

Despite the fact that the Gila River has a watershed of 60,000 square miles, a number of tributaries, and one dam, the Coolidge Dam, which creates the lake.

When you get into the West and anybody that lives West of Kansas, if you're in the mountain States, if you're in the Southwest, you already know this, but for the rest of us, water rights and acre feet of water makes the difference between water rationing and having water at all, being able to grow crops, or have dust, being able to live or having to relocate.

The problem is, Kearney is all of 2,000 souls, 2,000.

And if you are in the desert, you get the water resources are controlled typically by the U.S. Bureau of Land Reclamation.

But when it comes to Arizona, they cannot and do not list the Arizona ranches.

And they keep them anonymous because the ranches in the Gila River area in that region, they get bullied and they get harassed.

for trying to deal with non-lethal methods.

So that whole social aspect that Clara was talking about, these ranches are trying to do the non-lethal route and they have to stay anonymous for even trying because they get such backlash.

Very exhausting and kind of scary at times, but really cool.

I remember doing the, what's that river? The Gila River with the maps and stuff.

At the beginning, I was counting the bends.

I was like, dude, you can't count the bends.