Page 19 - Wood Plenty, Grass Good, Water None

Figure 4. 1867 photograph by Alexander Gardner taken west of present Ash Fork, Arizona. Picacho Mountain is in the distance. Courtesy of Boston Public Library.
Figure 5. 1995. Repeat of Figure 4. A few junipers have invaded and a low shrub, possibly winterfat, is less abundant. Other
wise, the site is stil a relatively open grassland. Photograph
White, and guide Antoine Leroux. They were escorted byaregulararmydetachmentunderthecommandof Lieutenant John Tidball. The reconnaissance party wasawayfromthemainwagontrainforsevendays. During this time, Whipple and his companions began to view the most important area of their expedition, andWhipplebegantodoubttheaccuracyoftheroute oftheBillWilliam'sForkshownonthemapproduced by Sitgreaves and Kern.
Whipple was led to believe that the Bill William's ForkarosenearthebaseofBillWilliam'sMountainand flowed west to the Colorado River. Because his objective was to find a suitable route for a railroad, the idea of a long, gradual river gradient to the Colorado River was
by R. M. Turner.
attractive. Such a drainage might provide the easiest routeforlayingtrack.Whilethepartyexploredtheupper VerdeRiverwatershedduringthefirstweekofJanuary, 1854WhipplegraduallyrealizedthatSitgreaves,Kern, and Leroux were wrong, and that the Williams Fork did not flow where he had hoped.
AlpheusFavour(1962,page209to210)identifiedthe sourceofWhipple'sbeliefregardingtheheadwatersof the Bill Williams Fork as being an erroneous statement by Leroux while he was guiding Sitgreaves. Leroux wasapparentlystillconfusedwhileguidingWhipple and thought that the Bill Williams Fork headed out on the west end of the Mogollon Plateau. In a sense, his confusion was fortuitous for the present study as
USDAForestServiceRMRS-GTR-177. 2006.
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