Southern Emigrant Trail

In 1848, a U.S. Army expedition of 1st Dragoons under Major Lawrence P. Graham marched from Chihuahua to California, through Janos, then westward to strike Cooke's road at Guadalupe Pass.

[2] From Yuma Crossing the Southern Emigrant Trail crossed the Colorado Desert, dipping south along the Colorado River, into Baja California, Mexico, (avoiding the vast Algodones Dunes to the west and northwest), to follow the waterholes along the Alamo and New Rivers, then northwest into California again across the desert to Carrizo Creek and the oasis at Vallecito.

Subsequently, the distance of the Cooke–Graham route was drastically shortened by the Tucson Cutoff pioneered by John Coffee Hays with a party of forty-niners in late 1849.

From this crossing the Pacific Wagon Road ran due west to link up again with Cooke's Wagon Road at Mescal Springs to continue on to Tucson, Arizona, then turned northward to the Pima Villages and Maricopa Wells where it turned westward along the Gila River following it to the ferries on the Colorado River across from Fort Yuma.

From 1859 to 1861, during the time of the Butterfield Overland Mail, the stages and other traffic ran over a shortcut between Ojo de Vaca and Apache Pass, over the Peloncillo Mountains through Doubtful Canyon.

However following the destruction of stage stations and coaches and the killing of their keepers and drivers at the outbreak of war with the Apache in 1861, this route was abandoned.

Favored ambush country, the shortcut was unwise to use unless the travelers were a strong detachment of soldiers or under military escort by one.