|
|
The Safford Valley and its surrounding region is a cultural crossroads of the Southwest. Evidence indicates that people of the San Pedro-Cochise culture practiced a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the vicinity prior to 500 BC. The San Pedro-Cochise people were the direct ancestors of the Mogollon, who, along with the Anasazi and the Hohokam, formed the three most significant cultural groups of the prehistoric southwest. The Gila River Valley in the vicinity of Safford lay along the path of Spanish exploration, and Coronado himself may have passed this way in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola in the summer of 1540. Around the time of Spanish exploration, the Apache Indians began to move into the Safford area from the northeast. By the seventeenth century the Apaches had established complete dominance over the region that would keep Spaniard, Mexican and Anglo settlers out for nearly three hundred years. The first Anglo-American incursion into the region came when the Army of the West under Major General Stephen Watts Kearney, traveling the entire length of the Gila River en route to California, camped at the foot of Mt. Graham in late October of 1846. The area remained under the nominal control of the Mexican government, until it was acquired as part of the Gadsden Purchase in 1852. Although trappers and mountain men as Kit Carson and James Ohio Pattie risked death at the hands of the Apaches to venture into the Gila River Valley in search of beaver pelts, the constant threat of attack by the Apaches kept any Anglo-American presence in the upper Gila Valley to a bare minimum until June of 1864 when the Army post of Camp Goodwin was established twenty-eight miles northwest of present-day Safford. At first only a few isolated were established in the area to provide beef and horses to Camp Goodwin, and later to Ft. Grant, Ft. Thomas and the San Carlos Agency. By the early 1870’s rich copper mines were operating in the nearby Clifton District and fabulous silver strikes were being reported in the Globe District. In response to the needs of the miners, the Gila Valley began to bloom with grain fields, fruit orchards, vegetable patches, and cattle ranches. The first permanent settlers to take advantage of the rich lowlands along the river were Mexican immigrants from the Mesilla Valley and Sonora who cleared land for farming. They built a small village of adobe huts near the Pueblo Viejo ruin. Within a few months William Munson established a store to serve the village and christened the community “Munsonville.” Munson soon sold out to I. E. Solomon, founder of Solomonville, and went to seek his fortune in the Globe District, where he discovered a silver nugget of legendary size. Munsonville, was, for a time, known as Pueblo Viejo, but eventually adopted the name of San Jose, which it retains to the present. Joshua Eaton Bailey, Daniel Hughes, Hiram Kennedy and John C. Glasby, farmers from the Gila Bend area who had been wiped out when the Gila River flooded in 1873, decided to try their luck further upriver, and made their way to the present site of Safford in January 1874. They set to work clearing fields and digging the Central Canal to bring Gila river water to irrigate them. Bailey, known as Safford’s founding father, christened the new settlement “Safford” in honor of Territorial Governor Anson P. K. Safford, toured the valley shortly after the farmers’ arrival. In addition to his farming ventures, Bailey established the new community’s first business, a combination general store, gaming parlor and saloon. He also set up a post office in the store and became the town’s first postmaster on March 5, 1875. C. M. Ritter surveyed the Safford Townsite in December 1875, and recorded the town plat on January 11, 1876. When the 11th Territorial Assembly carved Graham County out of portions of Apache and Pima counties in 1881, Safford was designated as the county seat. |
|||||||||||||
