In the early fifties a party of emigrants on…
source date: 1891
availability: public-domain

at St. Louis the A. T. & S. F. will make rate of one fare for the round trip. Tickets on sale from October 3 to 8. From Ihe October 9, 1891, Issue of The Enterprise The Legend Of New River How Water Came in the Desert After a Child’s Prayer From the La Junta Tribune. In the early fifties a party of emigrants on their way to the gold fields of California by the southern route, via Gila river, crossed the Colo- rado by ferry left by Graham in 1848 and “struck out on the desert for the land of promise.” The trail was well defined by aban- doned wagons and the bones of horses, mules and human beings. Struggling through the yielding sand, the thermometer at 120 deg., wheels falling apart, animals dying from heat and thirst, they on the second night out, halted some ten miles from “Cooke’s Well,” with water in their kegs exhausted. Tradition states that a little 10-year-old girl was heard praying, in one of the wagons, for water. It states that in her childlike faith she said : “O, good Heavenly Father I know that I have been a very naughty, naughty girl, but oh ! dear, I am so very thirsty, and mamma, and papa and the baby all want to drink so much. Do, good God give us water, and I will never, never be naughty again.”