Memoir of the Proposed Territory of ArizonaMowry, Sylvester
History
Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona
Mowry, Sylvester
Arizona -- History -- To 1912; Arizona -- Politics and government; Gadsden Purchase
It is no exaggeration to say that the mining companies, in their own
interest, will be forced to subscribe enough to the stock of the
company to insure its success. The Arizona Copper Mining Company is now
paying $100 per ton for the transportation of its ores from the mines
to Colorado city. One year's freight money at this rate would build
many miles of the road. The silver mining companies will be only too
glad to get their ores to market at so cheap a rate, as their
proportion of the subscription to the railroad. Iron and coal are both
found in the Territory,--the former especially in great abundance.
Texas has guaranteed the road to El Paso, by her generous legislation;
Arizona will build it, with her mineral wealth, to Fort Yuma, the
eastern boundary of California, and California will do the rest. The
first terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad will doubt less be on
the Gulf of California, at the Island of Tiburon, or more probably
Guyamas. A steam ferry across the Gulf, a short railroad across the
peninsula of Lower California to a secure harbor on the Pacific, (where
a steamer will take passengers and freight in four days to San
Francisco,) is the most natural course of this route. In view of this
probability, all the available points for such a terminus on the Gulf
have been, or are in progress of being, secured by capitalists, either
by obtaining grants from the Mexican Government, or by purchase from
private individuals. Already Guyamas is owned in great part by English
and American capitalists. A port on the Gulf of California is necessary
to our Pacific possessions, and must be ours sooner or later. The
longer it is delayed, the worse for American progress on the Pacific.
Arizona needs it at once, as a depot for the export of her ores, and
for the import of goods for the supply of her population.
The Mormon war has closed for years the great emigrant road to
California and Oregon, over the South Pass and Salt Lake valley,
leaving open only the route along the 32d parallel of latitude, through
Arizona. This route is by far the most practicable at all seasons of
the year, and the closing of the South Pass route by the Mormon
difficulty is an additional and urgent argument in favor of the early
organization of this Territory. Fifty thousand souls will move towards
the Pacific early in the spring, if the route is opened to a secure
passage.
The present condition of Arizona Territory is deplorable in the
extreme. Throughout the whole country there is no redress for crimes or
civil injuries--no courts, no law, no magistrates. The Territory of New
Mexico, to which it is attached by an act of Congress, affords it
neither protection nor sustenance. The following extracts from letters
received by the writer tell the story of the necessity for early action
on the part of Congress, in urgent terms.
TUBAC, GADSDEN PURCHASE, August 15, 1857.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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