Possibly as representative a region as is known in the settlement area of
the Mormon people lies for about 25 miles along the Gila River in eastern
Arizona, in Graham County, and within St. Joseph Stake. Over a dozen
communities are contained within this section and all are distinctly
Mormon in settlement and local operation, save Solomonville, at the upper
end, and Safford, the county seat and principal town. Most of the land is
owned by the Saints, who control, as well, a dozen small canals. Within
the Stake have been included Mormon settlements of the San Pedro Valley
and those upon the upper Gila, in Greenlee County, extending over into
New Mexico and El Paso.
The settlement of the Graham County section of the Gila Valley did not
start with the Mormons. Far from it. In the upper end of the cultivated
region is one of the most notable groups of ruins in the Southwest. This
group, since the coming of the Spaniard, appears to have borne
the name of Pueblo Viejo (Sp., "Old Town"). Somewhere farther down the
stream is assumed to have been "Chichilticalli," the "red house"
mentioned in the chronicles of Marco de Niza and the Coronado expedition.
The valley was traversed, from east to west, by Gen. S.W. Kearny, on his
way, with a dragoon escort, in 1846, to take California from the
Mexicans, this command, from the Pima villages westward, forming the
advance guard for the Mormon Battalion. Much interesting data of the Gila
Valley trip was written by Lieutenant Emory, who later was chief of the
Boundary Survey. It is notable that in 1846 Mount Graham already was
known by that name.