The Gila: River of the Southwest

In the words of Edwin Corle, author of Desert Country, who has chronicled the story of the Gila River, “There is no other stream that even resembles it”—and the pages of this book bear him out. A changeable ricer, at one time the Gila resembled the Everglades; in 1950 the lower river—fully half it six-hundred-mile length—was dry as dust. The Gila has never known a steamboat, very few rowboats, and only a fair assortment of fish, but from its ice caves and mountain torrents, through its torturous canyons, to its parched and sun-baked confluence with the Colorado, it has a history as dramatic and significant as any river in America. Civil War generals, Apaches, Mexicans, Mormons, and pioneers figure in the cast of characters, for since Spanish times the Gila has been a crossroads of the Southwest and in the direct line of march of the westward movement.