LIVING IN THE BED OF A PICKUP : No wonder the Butterfield Stage Line went bust in 1861......

Our theory is that the stagecoach drivers, like us, could never find the route and were constantly getting lost in the desert.

We spent this camping trip searching for the Butterfield Overland Mail Company route--an important historic mail route that ran from Missouri to California. It isn't easy to see in the following photo, but you can make out where it ran through what is now Arizona.

We were camping near it below the "N" in New Mexico--about halfway between that N and the M in Mexico.

The Butterfield line carried passengers and mail from 1858-1861. The Civil War ended the company.

The trip took 25 days. They did not stop to allow passengers to sleep! They had to sleep on the stage, which makes sleeping on an jet these days seem downright luxurious.

First class faced the front. Coach faced the rear (I made that up).

We wanted to camp in the Sonoran Desert National Monument. Vicky had found some places where we could do dispersed camping there, and then we thought we could find Butterfield Pass on a hike.

Alas, despite lots of investigation and reading of BLM websites, when we got to the National Monument all of the roads into it were blocked off.

What?

It was very peculiar because it was clear that the roads inside the National Monument were good roads, and were well maintained, and, in fact, showed that some vehicles had recently passed on them. However, we had to find a place to camp just outside it.

After doing some additional research we discovered that this part of the National Monument had been closed since 2008! The reason was understandable--it was being destroyed by off-road vehicles.

After we hiked for a couple of days inside the Monument (which was allowed), we found that the reason it was such a haven for off-road vehicles was because this particular desert was flat, without many rocks, and without many washes. In many places you could have driven your Prius off road.

So the plan had been to restore the area, create campgrounds, create trails, etc., but, of course, that had not been done or completed.

Consequently, we could not get to the most interesting parts of the National Monument--the hikes were too long to get to them because we had to camp outside it. But it's better than letting the area be completely destroyed. So, while we were disappointed we supported the decision by the BLM.

One of our goals had been to find the Butterfield Stage Route, so we could find the Butterfield Pass over the mountains. On our second day hiking, while searching for it, we were walking down a (very) rough side road and saw this sign:

Isn't this truly a bizarre sign to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere?

It's difficult to read, but it says

Mormon Battalion Trail

and then (I kid you not) on the left horn it says 1846 and on the right horn it says 1848.

What the Gilbert Stapley Stake and 1st Ward means is totally obscure, and we could find nothing about it.

Now, when you think of "Mormon," you usually get images like this:

or this:

But this?

Well, after doing some research, we found that there was a battalion of the US Army formed with Mormon volunteers who did so in order to get in the good graces of the United States. They were trying to get to Utah. They were given an allowance for uniforms, but were given permission to wear their own clothes. Consequently, they used the money for wagons, oxen, etc., to get from the Council Bluffs, Iowa, area to Utah.

(Interestingly, my father's family were Mormon who camped a winter in Council Bluffs. Many of them died there, and so they stayed in that part of Iowa and became members of an off-shoot of the Mormon church).

So, this was a bonafide US Army Battalion, whose job it was to build this road to California and to make it so that California would not join Mexico in the Mexican-American War.

However, lest you think they were wimps, they actually did fight a bonafide battle. (That is, if you consider a battle against some bulls to bonafide then they did. For real They fought a battle against some bulls). Here is the Wikipedia entry:

"The only "battle" they fought was near the San Pedro River in present-day Arizona against a sizable number of wild cattle. The battalion reached this area in November 1846, and their presence aroused curiosity among these animals. After the bulls of these herds caused destruction to some of the mules and wagons and resulted in two men being wounded, the men loaded their guns and attacked the charging bulls, killing 10–15 of the wild cattle, causing the event to be termed the "Battle of the Bulls".

Isn't history interesting?

So to celebrate their only military victory, the Mormon Batallion must have adopted rotting bull horns as their insignia. Odd, but hey, remember, after all they were Mormons--the same Mormons who believe that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon from Golden Plates by using a device called the Urim and Thummim (for real), and after the translation all of these things were conveniently taken by God back to heaven, I guess for his private museum or something. Maybe he has one of these rotting bull horn signs in his museum too.

After something like Golden Plates, a Urim and Thummim, and baptizing dead people against their will, using rotting bull horns to celebrate their lone military victory doesn't seem so odd in comparison, does it?

OK. I am exaggerating a bit. The Mormon Battalion also (sort of) had another engagement: THE CAPTURE OF TUSCON!! There was a small detachment of the Mexican Army there who, when hearing that the Mormon Battalion was approaching, ran for their lives so they wouldn't experience the same fate as the bulls (i.e., after they won the Battle of the Bulls the Mormons ate them).

After doing more research, we found that this particular trail had an entirely other history.

It is also the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail. Ever heard of it? Neither had we, although it was a pretty big deal 75 years before the Mormons fought the bulls.

In 1775 Juan, etc. etc., led a large contingent that basically opened up California to Mexico. The route they mapped was successfully used for about five years until the Yuma Indians made a fuss about all of those people trampling through their land ("Get off my grass!").

We made it to a part of the road where the BLM had planned on opening the National Monument and had erected signs. At this spot was this sign commemorating this expedition.

The trail:

There was also another sign there about the Mormon Bull Fighters:

A different sign than the first one.

Now, having spent many, many months in BLM areas, we can tell you that it is very unusual to see these types of signs. They are clearly hand-made, old, and done by some volunteer organization many years ago.

Now, back to the Butterfield mail line, which had been our original goal (although the other routes we discovered were just as interesting).

Out on a spur road, a rough one, we spotted something quite a ways out into the desert. It was two (very) old and faded signs about the Butterfield route:

These were hard to read, but of more importance, the trail was impossible to find. We lined up the two signs and took a reading, and tried to follow the reading and the maps we had. But to no avail.

All that is there is signs--no trail that the signs are there for. And if the BLM was funded as it should be the whole thing would be better because we have met a LOT of people who work for the BLM and they care!

Anyway, we were undaunted. So that night we got out our maps and tried to draw the mail route on our GPS device.

The next morning we hiked up a road and found it! We found where the trail originally went, and where the BLM had erected information signs.

We hiked a bit on the mail route, but because we had hiked so far from our campsite outside the National Monument to get to this spot we couldn't do what we had hoped to do, which was to reach the Butterfield Pass.

To celebrate finding the route we tried to take a selfie. However, selfies are kind of difficult when your camera is a 3-pound Nikon: