Cooke's
Wagon Road was a waste of time, said the more impatient emigrants.
Hadn't General Kearny headed straight west from the Ilio Grande to the
Pima villages? True, he couldn't take wagons: but if wagons were going
to prevent early arrival in the golden country . . . ! So, without
thought of what might lie beyond the Pima towns, many of the
gold-seekers packed supplies on their mules, abandoned their wagons and
struck westward from the valley of the Rio Grande at the place shown above, some two hundred miles south of Santa Fe.
After five or six days of mountain trails, they reached the arid valley of the Gila River (below).
