The early malaria of the Arizona valleys nearly all
has disappeared, with the draining of swampy places,
the eradication of beaver dams and mosquitoes and
the knowledge of better living conditions. Elsewhere
has been told of the abandonment of Obed and other
early Little Colorado settlements, because of chills
and fever. Something of the same sort was known
on the upper Gila, from 1882 to 1890, around Pima,
Curtis and Bryce. In this same upper Gila Valley,
Fort Goodwin had to be abandoned on account of malarial
conditions. The same is true of old Fort Grant,
across the divide, on the lower San Pedro. The
upper Verde, the Santa Cruz and nearly all similar
valleys knew malaria at the time of settlement.
According to Merrill, on March 26, 1879, the sick
and sorry settlers went into the Huachuca Mountains
to summer, but, “the wind blew so much that
we moved back to the river, near where Hereford now
is, rented some land and put in some crops.”
This location is just about where the members of the
Mormon Battalion, in 1846, had their memorable fight
with the wild bulls. A Merrill report, rendered
March 16, 1881, was far from hopeful and asked that
the writer be relieved of his responsibilities.
On the Route of the Mormon Battalion
This office has been unable to find any reference
connecting Merrill’s later experiences in the
San Pedro Valley with the time when he was an officer
of the Mormon Battalion, though it can be imagined
that his later associates had the benefit of many
reminiscences of that period of the march just prior
to the taking of Tucson.
The San Pedro Valley is a historic locality.
Down it passed Friar Marco de Niza, in 1539, and the
Coronado expedition of the following year. The
waters of the stream were a joyous sight to the Mormon
Battalion, when it passed that way during the Mexican
War. The country then had been occupied to some
extent by Spaniards or Mexicans, who had established
large ranches, with many cattle, from which they had
been driven by the Apaches, years before the Battalion
came. The country once had been the ranging ground
of the friendly Sobaipuri Indians, but they too had
been driven away by the hillmen and had established
a village on the Santa Cruz, near their kinsmen, the
Papago, almost on the site where Tucson was founded
as a Spanish presidio in 1776.
The river, when the Merrill party came, was found
usually in a deep gully, in places twenty feet below
the surface of the silty ground. Naturally, difficulty
has attended the attempts to dam the stream.
Chronicles of a Quiet Neighborhood
St. David was named by Alexander F. Macdonald in honor
of David W. Patten, a martyr of the Church, who died
at the hands of the same mob that killed Joseph Smith.
Its first mail was received at Tres Alamos, sixteen
miles down the river. A postoffice was established
in 1882, Joseph McRae in charge. When the Southern
Pacific came through, Benson was established, nine
miles to the northward. Tombstone lies sixteen
miles to the southeast.
