Page 41 - Early Naturalists of the Black Range

As noted on page 259 of Cooke’s Peak - Pasaron Por Aqui - A Focus on United States History in Southwestern New Mexico, the trail which runs west from Cooke’s Spring has been known by many names. A source you are researching may have used any of them.
Mormon Battalion. Captain Henry S. Turner, acting assistant adjutant-general of the Army of the West, immediately wrote to Cooke: ‘Red Sleeve, the Apache chief, had an interview with the general today & has promised to send some of his young men to conduct you by a good route to the Rio Gila, when they meet you. The general desires that you will treat them well & make use of them as guides
...” (Correspondence from Turner to Cooke, October 18, 1846) “...Arriving at the Ranches of Albuquerque on October 24, he met some of the guides sent back by Kearny. One of them, named Charbonneau, reported that they had explored a route somewhat different from that taken by the dragoons, but Cooke concluded that their work was not entirely satisfactory” . . . Of some interest to us, is the fact that Cooke decided that once he crossed (what is now known as Cooke’s Range) he would “follow the Janos road until I can turn off (probably two days on this side), as the best road, or route to the same point of the Gila”. The Janos road, from the Copper Mines to Janos was well established and used regularly by this time.
Cooke’s personal account - Journal of the march of the Mormon Battalion of infantry volunteers under the command of Lieut. Col. P. St. Geo. Cooke, also captain of dragoons, from Santa Fe N.M. to San Diego, Cal. - kept by himself by direction of the comd’g General Army of the West - begins at page 65 of the cited work (Exploring Southwest Trails). The following material is from the personal journal as transcribed in the cited work.
examined a route different in part and farther than that taken by the general, viz., to descend the river farther and fall into a road from El Paso to the Copper Mines. The report is favorable; but they did not make a thorough examination by any means; and the practicability of the route from the Copper Mines to the Gila is still a problem.” (pp. 74-75)
“November 9. Leroux (ed. one of the guides) came back last evening; he went down about fifty miles, struck off where the river turns east at San Diego, and in fifteen miles found some water holes. Then he saw from a high hill a creek running out of the mountain at an estimated distance of thirty miles (the next water), over a rather level plain.” (p. 94)
“November 13. After following the river (ed: Rio Grande) this morning a mile or more, we found a pole and note from Leroux, but met at the same time two of the guides, who directed us short to the right to leave the river, stating it was fifteen miles to water. (ed. Near present day Rincón they turn west.) I followed a smooth inclined plain (between two bluffs) three miles and then had a steep ascent; then following ridges and making ascents occasionally, we reached another inclined bed of a rainy-weather stream; from this we wound up a long valley to a ridge which bounds it, following that over a” (p. 98). The remainder of this section is shown here as printed in the cited work.
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“October 24...(at Albuquerque) I met here Charbonneau, one of the guides left for me, who reports that he had