Picacho Pass: The Westernmost Fight of the Civil War
On April 15, 1862, a Union cavalry patrol from the California Column came on a Confederate picket at Picacho Pass, about 50 miles northwest of Tucson. Lieutenant James Barrett's men charged in through the mesquite. The fight went on for around an hour and a half. Barrett and two of his men died, several more were wounded, and the Confederates fell back toward Tucson with three Union soldiers as prisoners.
Why a skirmish mattered
It was a small fight, and it is usually described as the westernmost battle of the Civil War. It told the Union commander, Colonel James Carleton, that the Confederates in Tucson had eyes on the road. In the weeks after, the Confederates withdrew to the Rio Grande, and in May the California Column took Tucson without a fight.
The Confederate outpost had been sent out from Brig. Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley's army in New Mexico. Confederate plans reached that far toward the Pacific. Most springs, Picacho Peak State Park holds a reenactment, and a monument near the old stage road marks the site of the fight.
West of the War follows the California Column's march east across the desert.
Sources: Arizona State Parks, Picacho Peak State Park history page; Andrew E. Masich, The Civil War in Arizona: The Story of the California Volunteers, 1861-1865 (2006); Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 50.
Illustration: AI-generated, artistic interpretation.