By Andrew Wallace

Part 1 of this article (Days Past November 17, 2013) covered Joe Walker’s early years while he was building a national reputation as trapper, explorer and guide.  This part will add the later experiences that led him to this area.

In 1840 Joe Walker turned 42, old for that time, but by that fall he was on the Green River at the last Rocky Mountain fur trade rendezvous.  Three years later he guided the first big caravan of American settlers to Oregon, 38 of whom followed him back to Sutter’s California colony.  His brothers and their families were already with him and settled nearby.

By the time war with Mexico broke out in Texas in 1846, a small expedition under U.S. Army Captain John C. Fremont had already sparked a native revolt in Upper California.  Although Fremont’s guides were Kit Carson and Tom Fitzpatrick, the “Pathfinder” had hired Walker in Utah to guide him around Utah Lake and through the Great Basin.  They were all on a mountain near Salinas, California, when the few loyal Mexican troops drove them away.  In disgust, Walker and his civilian trappers left Fremont and went to Los Angeles to buy horses for trade at Bent’s Fort in present day Colorado.

In the winter of 1847 Walker returned to his home at Independence, Missouri.  After the war ended next year he returned to California and the new state shortly gave him land near Gilroy.  From his ranch Walker supplied Gold Rush miners with horses, cattle and supplies but he never looked for gold; it remained for other family members to prospect and be disappointed.

In 1849 Walker served as the guide for an army expedition against the Mohave Indians, then went up the Colorado to cross opposite the Virgin River mouth and visit the Hopis for several days.  After traveling to Santa Fe, Walker returned to his Gilroy ranch.

Walker, Arizona was named for Joe Walker who reputedly lived in that vicinity in a simple log cabin (Photo Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum Call Number: CI-TN-348p).

After the Civil War began and Texans invaded New Mexico in the summer of 1861, some friends persuaded him to lead a prospecting expedition to the new state of Colorado.  There were hopes that gold might be found on the way along the Little Colorado River but this proved false.  They remained in the mountains near La Junta and Bent’s Fort until Union troops drove the Texans out of New Mexico, then the Walker Party, as we call them today, turned south and west headed for the San Francisco (Verde) River in Arizona.  En route, near Silver City, Jack Swilling joined them.

From Tucson, Swilling and Walker rode north to the Pima Villages and turned down the Gila River to a mostly dry tributary, the Hassayampa, where three years earlier Swilling had chased marauding Apaches northward.  Swilling persuaded Walker that the mountains around the Hassayampa headwaters would likely yield the kind of ore they wanted.

The rest, as Prescott school children say, is history.  The Walker Party, guided by Jack Swilling, followed the intermittent Hassayampa into the Central Mountains of Arizona in the spring of 1863, found some “color” on the headwaters, and shortly discovered real ore on Lynx Creek.  When word of the find got out, the civil appointees of the new Territory of Arizona, including the first governor, John N. Goodwin were diverted from their original destination of Tucson to the “diggings.”  Governor Goodwin soon decreed that there was where the territorial capitol city would be.  A new city was platted in the pines called Prescott, after Territorial Secretary Richard McCormick’s favorite historical writer, Prof. William H. Prescott of Harvard.

Indian troubles brought Union troops, mostly New Mexico volunteers, in late 1863 who built a fort named for a late Union general killed at the Battle of Chancellorsville—Amiel W. Whipple, who ten years earlier had mapped a survey of northern Arizona for a proposed transcontinental railroad.

Walker stayed in the mining camp named for him for a time but grew disgusted with the swarm of licentious gold seekers who boozed, quarreled, and murdered Indians in “self-defense.”  With eyesight failing, he retired to a nephew’s ranch in California.  He lived a full life among his large family and old companions of the trail until his death in 1876.  He is buried in the Alhambra Pioneer Cemetery near Martinez, California.

(Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners, International (www.prescottcorral.org).The public is encouraged to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact SHM Library & Archives Reference Desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14 or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information.)