Bradshaw Trail

The Bradshaw Trail is a historic overland stage route and ancient Indian trail in the Colorado Desert of Southern California. In 1862, William Bradshaw established the first road across Riverside County to the Colorado River as an overland stage route. Starting in San Bernardino, the trail was heavily traveled from 1862 to 1877, transporting miners and other passengers to the gold fields at La Paz, Arizona. An approximately 70-mile recreational trail (110 km) along the route is maintained by the Riverside County Transportation Department.

This route across the Colorado Desert was part of an Indigenous trade network. It was used by Native peoples, including the Cahuilla, Halchidhoma, Maricopa, and others, who knew the locations of springs and water holes and traveled between what’s now Southern California and the Colorado River region. Historians named the ancient trade route the Cahuilla-Halchidhoma Trail, the Mexicans called the route into the Colorado Desert the Cocomaricopa Trail, Californians pre 1860's called the Route the Old Salt Road.

Historically The route ran from San Bernardino, California, through the San Gorgonio Pass and Coachella Valley, past the Salton Sink (now filled by the Salton Sea), through the Chuckwalla Mountains, and east to the Colorado River where Bradshaw's Ferry was available to transport travelers across the river to the gold fields upstream in La Paz, Arizona. Once in La Paz, additional eastern roads provided access to the mining districts of the central Arizona Territory, near Wickenburg and Prescott.

The current trail is a graded dirt road, that traverses southeastern Riverside County, and a minimal part of Imperial County, Western trailhead beginning roughly 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Dos Palmas Oasis and Eastern terminus about 4 miles (6.4 km) north-west of Palo Verde, CA for a total of 70 miles (110 km).