By William "Bill" Peck

In about 1823, fur trappers such as Jim Bridger, "Old Bill" Williams, James O. Pattie and his father, Sylvester, began penetrating the mountains of the west.  There were about 400 of their numbers, diligent humans, animals who could carry a pack of traps, and supplies that would stagger a horse. Horses were of little use to them since stealth was essential and these men survived only because they could "out-Indian" the Indians.

By the heyday of their existence they had explored and trapped from the Yukon to the lower Sonora.  It was they who spread the rumors of riches and were the guides to the earliest military mapmakers.  Jim Bridger guided the early Mormons and told Brigham Young about the Salt Lake Valley. 
 

Their impact upon the land far exceeded their numbers.  They left a mixed legacy.  By 1840, they had nearly destroyed the beaver population.  Their method was to trap a stream from source to termination taking all the animals unfortunate enough to place their foot into their ill-concealed leg hold traps, so placed that tripping them drowned the animal.  The Indians, who realized their value as trade items, harvested what few they missed. 
 

The accompanying drawing is taken from artwork reproduced from "U.S. Senate, Executive Document No. 91, 33rd Congress, 2nd Session" published in 1856, is an account from the Whipple expedition to find a railroad route through Northern Arizona.  The artist accompanied Ameil Weeks Whipple and did an excellent job of portraying the convergence of the Big Sandy and Santa Maria Rivers, the point at which the Bill Williams River is born.  Witness the wide seneca terraced with beaver ponds, still in existence so many years later since the beaver trapper's encroachment.  The mountain in the background is easily recognized today but the river channel is quite another thing. 
 

Following the beaver trappers were the trekkers moving across the west starting with the expeditions of exploration and ending with the early miners that followed.  Had it not been for animal power these migrations would have been impossible.  Indians who knew the only viable way through this desert country guided the earliest.  The prime route for both whites and Indians from central Arizona westward to the Colorado River was by way of the Santa Maria and Bill Williams Rivers.  Even the Spaniard, Marcos Farfan, used this route in 1610, as did numerous other early Spanish explorers guided by the Indians. 
 

Animals required grass and water and men needed meat, all of which abounded along these early streams.  The demand exceeded the supply and the rich bottomlands of rushes and cottonwoods were denuded yielding to the teeth of grazing animals that eventually stripped away the sod and the ancient beaver dams that had taken centuries to take root and tame the rivers.  Vanquished by floods which cut deep gorges down through the arrested sand and muck, the riparian plain was drained.  This killed the forest and the fish as well as all the creatures that depended upon this oasis in the desert. 
 

To compound that fatal injury came the hordes of cattle in following years that polished off the vegetation that had somehow escaped and prevented it from re-establishing.  Today, looking at same scene, one sees no water, no trees other than a few struggling deep rooted mesquites--only a vast sea of bone dry sand stirred and raked by reoccurring floods. 
 

There were some benefits to mankind though.  It is a forgotten fact that malaria was once endemic to all of the perennial streams in the west.  Even the Indians abandoned Wickenburg in the summer months because of the severity of the mosquitoes that bore malaria until 1867.  The commandant at Camp Date was on his deathbed with the "fever" when General Crook visited there before the Cinco Cannones battle, according to Bourke.  All the accounts record the raging fevers of the Gila and Salt River valley.  Not until the earliest miners and farmers diverted the water from the Hassayampa River, drying the riverbed, did the threat disappear and towns like Wickenburg flourished. 
 

There is a lesson here.  Those who would reintroduce the "wetlands" into the west should bear this in mind. With forecasted climatic warming, these old scourges will and are reappearing. 
 

There has been much irreparable damage done but there is still a grain of hope.  Knowing history has alerted some to the hazards of environmental degradation.  Beaver are starting to reappear on the Santa Maria River once more.  These are desert beaver that instead of building deep ponds for their lodges dig into the bank.  The dams they build are shallow affairs that divert water diagonally across the sandy, rocky channel for the purpose of irrigating the reoccurring tules and willows.  They are literally farming the river bottom, and succeeding.  Sod, where the river periodically runs, is bedding down the channel that is becoming denuded of the deep, course, dry sand that hid the water away beneath the surface.  Now, little rills of clean flowing water bear little minnows that swim in the shadows and pools.  True, one great flood can remove this progress, but beavers are patient, more so than man. 
 

We should be happy at the beavers determined effort while thanking the Patties and the Williams for relieving us of that plague, malaria.  You win some, you lose some, they say.  Better that we learn. 

William Peck is a long time resident of Hillside. There will be more stories from his past in the coming months.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (book 625.11 Rep v2, p103). Reuse only by permission.
In 1853-54 the Whipple expedition came across the "Valley of Bill William Fork."  This drawing shows what appears to be a rather large beaver pond in the foreground.  The pond is especially striking considering that the trappers had pretty much taken most all of the beaver years before.