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Search for a Southern Route
California-Sonora Road
Following the successful revolution against Spanish rule and the
establishment of the Mexican state in 1821, attention was directed
once again to the northern frontier regions. The security of California
was seen by the new republic as its most urgent problem. Russia
increasingly appeared to pose a threat to California, and trappers of
the English Hudson's Bay Company pushed southward ever deeper
into Mexico's territory. When it was decided that California's future
as a Mexican possession required strengthening their presence there,
the immediate opening of an overland route between California and
Mexico became necessary.
The first concrete step in re-establishing a California-Sonora road
was motivated by a need for a mail route. In 1823, Father Feliz
Caballero traveled from his missions in Baja California to Sonora via
the region near the mouth of the Colorado and the Gila River. The
same year, Captain Jose Romero, commandant of the Tucson
presidio, returned to Baja California over roughly the same route, but
not before being robbed by Indians near the mouth of the Colorado.
His later investigations into the feasibility of a trail that would pass
through San Bernardino and San Gorgonio Pass and strike the
Colorado north of the junction with the Gila were no more
encouraging.
When Romero returned to Sonora in late 1825, Romualdo Pacheco,
an engineer, accompanied the expedition as far as the Colorado river,
then marched back to the coast by way of the southern, or Yuma,
route. This last, the San Diego-Yuma route via Warner's Pass,
eventually was recognized as the official California segment of the
California-Sonora road. Although the route was dangerous, it did in
fact become a road of sorts as private persons began to use it in
traveling from Sonora.
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