Martin Bender
Dateline April 15, 1862, New Mexico Territory: “Twelve Union Cavalry and a strong force of Confederate pickets clashed in a firefight near Picacho Peak, a volcanic spire about 50 miles northwest of the small Sonoran Desert town of Tucson. The battle left three Union soldiers dead and three wounded. Confederate losses were reported as one killed, four wounded, and three captured.”
The New Mexico Territory at the start of the Civil War was left essentially unguarded by Washington because of the Union Army’s manpower needs in the east. Confederate President Jefferson Davis saw an opportunity to extend the Confederacy westward through the New Mexico Territory and southern California to the Pacific coast. In late 1861, a company of 120 Confederate soldiers was dispatched from Texas to explore that possibility. In February 1862 Tucson was captured and scouting parties were dispatched to look for any Union forces that might inhibit the westward march.
Aware of Richmond’s interest in expanding across the Southwest, California Unionists assembled the “California Column.” At approximately 1,400 strong, the Union force moved first to Yuma and then due east to stop any Confederates they might encounter. In mid-April 1862, the soldiers bivouacked in a desert location that is today Arizona City.
A 12-man Union patrol plus one scout under the command of Lieutenant James Barrett, with specific orders not to engage on his own, proceeded toward Picacho Peak on the morning of April 15, 1862. At approximately 2 p.m. that afternoon, the patrol dismounted to surprise and captured three Confederate soldiers.
The Union patrol, however, had ridden into a deadly ambush. As the Lieutenant started to remount his horse he was fatally struck by Confederate rifle fire that erupted from the surrounding rocks and brush. During a 90-minute firefight that followed, two more Union soldiers were killed and three wounded. Union after-action reports stated that one Confederate soldier was killed and three wounded before the Union troops, exhausted and low on ammunition, broke contact and returned to the Union encampment.
The Confederate soldiers galloped to Tucson to report the engagement and other information about the advancing Union troops. In large part because of this intelligence and the Battle of Picacho Peak, Richmond abandoned its westward ambition and by July of 1862 the Confederates had retreated to Texas.
The Battle of Picacho Peak (also known as the Battle of Picacho Pass) was the western most engagement with casualties between Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. At Stanwix Station, about 90 miles west of Casa Grande, a conflict without casualties occurred earlier on March 29, 1862.
The bodies of the two fallen enlisted Union soldiers were recovered and taken to the National Cemetery at the Presidio in San Francisco. Not accounted for, it is believed that Lieutenant Barrett is buried in an unmarked grave resting to this day somewhere in the desert just south of Robson Ranch.
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