Gila River - History

History

A band of Pima (autonym "Akimel O'odham", river people), the Keli Akimel O'odham (Gila River People), have lived on the banks of the Gila River since before the arrival of Spanish explorers. Popular theory says that the word Gila was derived from a Spanish contraction of Hah-quah-sa-eel, a Yuma word meaning "running water which is salty". Their traditional way of life (himdagĭ, sometimes rendered in English as Him-dak) was and is centered at the river, which is considered holy. Traditionally, sand from the banks of the river is used as an exfoliant when bathing (often in rainstorms, especially during the monsoon).

Indigenous peoples such as the Hohokam were responsible for creating large, complex civilizations along the Gila and Salt Rivers between 600 and 1450 A.D. These native civilizations depended largely on irrigated agriculture, for the purposes of which they constructed over 200 miles (320 km) of canals.

The first European to see the Gila River was possibly Spanish explorer and missionary Juan de la Asunción. Asunción reached the Gila in 1538 after traveling northwards along one of its tributaries, either the San Pedro or Santa Cruz. In 1540, Hernando de Alarcón sailed up the Colorado and Gila Rivers; maps drawn by his expedition show the river as the Miraflores or Brazos de la Miraflores.

During the Mexican-American War, General Stephen Watts Kearny marched 100 cavalrymen from the 1st U.S. Dragoons along the Gila River in November 1846. This detachment was guided by Kit Carson. The Mormon Battalion followed Kearny's troops, building a wagon trail roughly following the river from December 1846 to January 1847.

After the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848, the Gila River served as a part of the border between the United States and Mexico until the 1853 Gadsden Purchase soon extended American territory well south of the Gila. The confluence of the Gila with the Colorado River was also used as a reference point for the southern border of California. Beginning in 1871, mainly Mormon settlers populated the Gila River valley around present-day Phoenix, using the Gila, Salt and San Pedro Rivers for irrigation and establishing at least six major settlements.

In 1944 twenty-five German POWs pulled off the largest and most spectacular escape from an American compound during the war, digging a 178-foot tunnel out of the Navy’s Papago Park Prisoner of War Camp in Arizona. All of the men were eventually captured, though some remained at large for more than a month. Among the last to be brought in were three German soldiers who had based their audacious but ill-fated escape plans on a stolen highway map of Arizona, which showed the Gila River leading to the Colorado River, which in turn led to Mexico. Devising a scheme to flee by water, the Germans constructed a collapsible kayak under the noses of their American captors, tested it in a makeshift pool within the prison compound, then snuck it out through the tunnel. Their plan was perfect- except for the map. The Gila, shown as a healthy blue waterway, turned out to be little more than a dry rut.