26 FKOM THE PIMAS VILLAGES TO THE RIO GRANDE. 



602 feet above the Playa at the Croton springs, and the ascending grade will be about 100 feet 

 per mile. This grade can be materially reduced by taking a direct line from the summit of the 

 Eailroad Pass to Nugent's pass, which would place it several miles north of those springs. 

 Such a location would also shorten the distance several miles, but it is open to the objection of 

 being too far from the water, which is below the level of the line of road, and consequently 

 be difficult to obtain. It could be brought into requisition, however, by resorting to a wind- 

 mill jramp, such as are in use on many of the leading lines of railroad in the country, and 

 which may be advantageously used at several localil;ies on the entire route. There is permanent 

 water at Pheasant creek and Antelope springs, which may be conducted to a point on the line 

 north of the Playa, but it is believed that the abundant and never failing supply at Croton 

 springs can be availed of most economically. 



From the summit of Nugent's pass to the San Pedro river, a few miles below Agua Verde, the 

 distance is twenty-one miles. The difference of elevation is 1,390 feet, giving a maximum 

 descending grade of sixty-six feet per mile. From this point on the San Pedro to its mouth, a 

 distance of sixty-seven and one-half miles, the stream has a fall of twenty feet per mile. Side 

 cutting will be necessary at but few places, to turn the points of the mesas, but the work generally 

 will be easy. The right bank affords the best location to within a few miles of the Gila, where 

 several opportunities are offered to bridge the bed of the stream, at points where the water sinks 

 below the surface, and rarely runs above it, and thence continuing on the left bank to the junc- 

 tion of the two valleys. 



By the Aravaypa route we have from the point of divergence of the first line, the Eailroad 

 Pass, a distance of eighty and one-quarter miles, where the maximum grade will not exceed 

 sixty and three-tenths feet per mile. This grade occurs in the passage of the Calitro mountains, 

 through or near the caiion of the Aravaypa. From the Railroad Pass to the head streams of the 

 Aravaypa, twenty-three miles, the line traverses an immense plain, with long waving undulations, 

 like the ground swell of the ocean. The grades required upon this stretch will be very light, 

 simjjly requiring a little more than a conformatiou to the contours of the ground. From this point 

 a most singular and interesting feature presents itself. The arroyo of the Aravaypa here begins, 

 and occupies almost the entire remainder of the trough between the Pinaleiio mountains on the 

 northeast and the Calitro mountains on the southwest ; this vast plain which formerly extended 

 further to the northwest, having been swept away by denuding waters, leaving a valley precisely 

 similar to that of the San Pedro. The descent of this valley is at the rate of forty feet per mile 

 to the entrance of the canon, and presents no obstacle of any magnitude to its being easily occupied 

 by the road. 



The descent through the caiion is more rapid, being ninety-seven feet per mile, but it is pro- 

 posed to locate the line upon the slopes of tliis gorge and over the mesas, by leaving the stream 

 at the western end of the caiion, and continuing for a short distance over the mesa to the bed 

 of an arroyo which debouches about three miles below the mouth of the Aravaypa, with a 

 descending grade of sixty-three and two-tenths feet per mile; thence to the mouth of the San 

 Pedro, at about fifteen feet per mile. 



The first water which is encountered on the direct line of the road, after leaving the Railroad 

 Pass, is Bear springs, twenty-nine miles distant. There are six of these springs, similar in 

 character to all others encountered in this region, rising from the plain, which, for several 

 hundred square yards around, is covered with salsolaceous plants. The water is abundant and 



