Governor J.C. Fremont was the Fifth Governor of the Territory of Arizona.
Image: Widipedia, Public Domain
As one of the newly acquired possessions of the United States, one of the duties of Arizona Territorial Governor J. C. Fremont was to provide regular reports to the Secretary of the Interior. Governor Fremont's report in 1879 is a romantic description of Phoenix in its' natural state before the modern concrete jungle seized the city. What is most striking about this report is the description of abundant broad canals that are nearly non-existent today:
Near the end of February of the present year [1879] I found fig trees budding and apricots in bloom in Phoenix. The cottonwood trees which lined the streets were in full spring foliage, and the fields were green with alfalfa and grain.
The town is on the Salt River tributary of the Gila, about 1,800 feet above the sea. The river here runs through a broad valley plain circled by mountains. It furnishes abundant water for irrigation, and the asequias or water-ditches are spread out over the valley in a space eight or ten miles broad. Streams of running water, which one met in every direction, gave a very grateful sense of freshness quite unexpected in this dry country of Arizona, and remains of old asequias used by the former Indian population show that with them, too, it was a favorite place. For seven or eight months of the year the weather is said to be pleasant, but hot for the remainder. The town is in the center of an important farming district, and its growing prosperity is secured and made permanent by its position, which is forcibly indicated by the country surrounding it. The trade of a large neighboring Indian reservation has been an element in its prosperity, and now the Southern Pacific Railway passes within thirty miles.
Territory of Arizona
Executive Department
Prescott, November 20, 1879
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