It became generally known after a party of Forty-Niners led by Colonel John Coffee Hays followed a route suggested to him by a Mexican Army officer as a shorter route than Cooke's Wagon Road which passed farther south to cross the mountains to the San Pedro River at Guadalupe Pass.
[1] The Tucson Cutoff ran from Ojo de Ynez on Cooke's Wagon Road on the southeast side of the Big Burro Mountains to the southwest to a spring and through a pass in the Pyramid Mountains south of today's Lordsburg.
Descending to the southwest onto the playa in the north end of Animas Valley the cutoff route passed to the west through Stein's Pass, then southwest of its mouth to the Cienega of San Simon on the San Simon River.
[2][3][4] The Tucson Cutoff, also called variously "Puerto del Dado" Trail, Nugent's Wagon Road, later Apache Pass Trail, was long traveled by Spanish and Mexican soldiers and other travelers prior to 1830.
However the Tucson Cutoff, better watered, continued in use as a wagon route between the San Pedro River and the Sulphur Springs Valley for decades afterward.