26 
FROM THE PIMAS VILLAGES TO THE RIO GRANDE. 
602 feet above the Playa at the Croton springs, and the ascending grade will he about 100 feet 
per mile. This grade can he 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, hut 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 
he difficult to obtain. It could he brought into requisition, however, by resorting to a wind¬ 
mill pump, such as are in use on many of the leading lines of railroad in the country, and 
which may he advantageously used at several localities on the entire route. There is permanent 
water at Pheasant creek and Antelope springs, which may he conducted to a point on the line 
north of the Playa, hut it is believed that the abundant and never failing supply at Croton 
springs can he availed of most economically. 
Prom the summit of Nugent’s pass to the San Pedro river, a few miles helow 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 he necessary at hut few places, to turn the points of the mesas, but the work generally 
will be easy. The right hank 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 
helow the surface, and rarely runs above it, and thence continuing on the left hank to the junc¬ 
tion of the two valleys. 
By the Aravaypa route we have from the point of divergence of the first line, the Railroad 
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 canon 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, 
simply requiring a little more than a conformation 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 Pinaleno 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 canon is more rapid, being ninety-seven feet per mile, but it is pro¬ 
posed to locate the line upon the slopes of this gorge and over the mesas, hy leaving the stream 
at the western end of the canon, 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 
