Truxton Spring, about three quarters of a mile south of Route 66 east of Crozier, is the spring Edward Fitzgerald Beale's party called Truxton's spring while laying out the wagon road along the 35th parallel in 1857 and 1858, and the source of the name Truxton carries today. Truxtun was a Beale family name: his mother Emily was the daughter of Commodore Thomas Truxtun, and his son, born in 1856, was named Truxtun Beale. Beale's 1857 expedition was the one that tested camels as pack animals for the Army, with the Camel Corps animals and their driver Hadji Ali, known as Hi Jolly, travelling with the wagons; the party reached the Colorado River on 18 October 1857.
Beale's published report records the spring on the return journey east. On 27 January 1858 the party laid by to shoe the mules and found the spring close to camp, water pouring over the rock into a basin some twenty feet across and eight or ten deep. At two that morning, Beale wrote, Indians had attacked the camp, killing one mule with arrows and wounding another, and two of the attackers were killed that morning. On 28 January the party left Truxton's spring and travelled up the canyon past White Rock spring.
The road Beale opened carried emigrants and stockmen until the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad was finished in 1883, and the railroad and Route 66 later followed much of its line.
Getting there
35.4369, -113.6309
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop is an audio tour guide app that tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
