The adobe walls at the Arizona Territory fort “did not keep the heat out, for the walls were so hot on the inside you could scarcely bear your hand on them.'
Jan Cleere Special to the Arizona Daily Star Probably not a young woman when she married 50-year-old Hiram Dryer in 1859, Alice Garrison Dryer went with her military husband wherever he was posted. Her descriptions of the often-stark military posts at which they were stationed present an intense view of the early West, particularly in Arizona Territory.
People are also reading… “The trip from Panama to San Francisco was enjoyable,” Alice wrote. “For two weeks we glided along in this floating palace on the peaceful glassy waters of the Pacific.” "All bedding, camp kit, etc., had to be ready for the men to put into the wagons at a certain moment when the call was sounded to strike tents. Oftentimes we commenced our day’s journey by moonlight or starlight, and were always in camp by midday.
Arriving at Fort Yuma, Alice found little to please her with its scarcity of shade, trees, shrubs and grass. “Nothing green visible to the naked eye,” she said, “nothing but bare rock and sand reflecting the heat like a fiery furnace.” “The arrival of the overland mail once or twice a month was a great event,” she said, “sometimes six weeks would pass without our hearing a word from the states.”
“Some of the ladies I found had been situated more uncomfortably than we at Fort Yuma in some respects,” she said. “Our heat was more intense, but at Fort Mojave the quarters were wretched, with thatched roofs and houses old and uncomfortable.”
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