Page 77 - Cooke's Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui

facility the previous December. Parke continued on to Cooke’s Spring and recorded that the road from there to Fort Yuma (having eliminated the ox-bow portion of Cooke’s route) was good and presented no obstacle to rapid wagon transportation except for one steep ascent and patches of desert sands.
From Cooke’s Spring, the route lay across open plains to the Mesilla Valley. This was known to be an entirely practical route. Parke, however, decided to try a more direct, southerly route from Cooke’s Spring to the river. He found a pass between the “Picacho de los Mimbres”
a more favorable route slightly south of the one surveyed the previous year. However, from Cooke’s Spring to Fort Fillmore, Parke followed the usual wagon road, diverging only near the edge of the mesa and descending to the river bottom by a smooth and easy slope that avoided the rough canyon north of El Picacho.77
By locating a new pass in Arizona, Parke had
reduced the number of passes to be crossed to 4 and
the maximum elevation by 1,000 feet. The maximum
(Cooke’s Peak) and the Sierra Florida which afforded a fine route to Fort Fillmore, located west of the Rio Grande and eight
grade was also reduced from 93 to 60.3 feet per 78
miles south of Mesilla.
Arriving there about the
mile.
from the Rio Grande to the Pima villages there were about 300 miles of smooth, hard road. He estimated that the trip from Fulton, Missouri, to San Diego
*7Q
As a result of Parke’s and other reports, Secretary of War Davis, in his annual report for 1855, asserted that “such a road would be of great advantage in military opera- tions and would facilitate the transportation of the
mail across that country.”80
Congress, however, continued to debate the issue
with each side, North and South, apprehensive that the other was trying to gain an advantage. In 1856 sectionalism intensified following passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The result was that no rail- road would be built in the West until after the Civil War. However, if the railroad were to be delayed, wagon roads did not have to suffer the same conse- quence. California Senator John B. Weller urged the construction of two wagon roads to the Califor- nia border, one by way of South Pass and Salt Lake, the other from Franklin to Fort Yuma. From these points the Californians would build their own seg-
81
ments of the transportation network.
In speaking before the Senate in May of 1856,
Weller waved a petition by 75,000 Californians and shouted, “California, when she speaks, desires to be heard.” “ He sponsored three road construction bills, including one to provide $200,000 for construc- tion of the Franklin-Fort Yuma Road. During the first week of July, the appropriation bill was passed. The road construction was an issue in the 1856 political campaigns, and the successful presidential candidate, James Buchanan, pledged continuing
support for improved communication with the
middle of March, he had in 27 days explored and
marked a 373-mile route from the Pima villages to
the Rio Grande (Figure 23). All things were
favorable to the construction of a rail line except for
inadequate water; including Cooke’s Spring, there
were only nine reliable sources along the entire
73 route.
The route was reported as favorable for several reasons. The mountain passes were low; the surface was suitable for construction of the most costly item, the road bed; the temperature and weather were moderate; and a considerable percentage of the
74
route was over table lands.
Army Corps of Topographical Engineers already favored this route, and the survey report met with
75
the strong approval of Secretary of War Davis.
In August, about six months after Parke completed his survey, President Franklin Pierce vetoed an om- nibus River and Harbor’s Bill. He was against the measure not because of the question of importance or need but because, constitutionally, the road had to be required for military service if federal funds
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were to pay for its construction.
necessary for Congress to consider each proposed road and railroad against this criterion.
After completing a railroad survey between San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1855, Parke (now officially a Second Lieutenant) decided to improve his survey of the previous year along the 32nd paral- lel route. Parke’s survey party split in several groups at various times to examine alternate routes and compare notes. They did find what they considered
would take fewer than 30 days.
The United States
Thus, it was
Chapter 3
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Pacific coast.
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In his summary report, Parke claimed that