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Southern Emigrant Trail

Major road across southern Arizona Territory connecting the Santa Fe Trail and Los Angeles, California.[1]

Incorporates portions of the Gila Trail the Butterfield Stage Trail. The route was important beginning in the days of the California Gold Rush, as it afforded year-round travel, unlike the northern routes into California that were often blocked by treacherous mountains and winter snows winter snows.[1]

The Long Hunt: In March[3] of 1877, Bret Maverick traveled[4] along the Southern Emigrant Trail from the New Mexico Territory[3] into Tucson, Arizona Territory, where he met with Governor Anson P. K. Safford. There, he made an appeal on the behalf of Jedd Ferris, who Bret knew to be serving a life sentence for the crimes of another man.[4] Having no success with Safford, Bret returned to New Mexico. In late September of that year,[3] Bret traveled once again along the Trail to visit Ferris in Yuma Territorial Prison to tell him the story of Lefty Dolan and his dying confession. Ferris asked Bret to deliver a message for him to his wife, Martha,[4] having him return along the Southern Emigrant Trail to Tucson, and then twenty miles south[3] to Dry Springs.[4] In February[3] of 1878, Bret returned to meet Ferris, then a freed man, in Yuma[4] and rode with him back along the Trail into Tucson,[3] and then back to the Ferris Ranch in Dry Springs.[4] After seeing Ferris reunited with Martha, Bret left Dry Springs, headed back to the Southern Emigrant Trail and followed it west back into New Mexico Territory.[3]

The Southern Emigrant Trail remained the primary east-west route through the region until the coming of the railroads in the 1880s.[1]