Western Women: Alice Dryer wrote of her hard 1860 Fort Yuma life

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.

Alice’s first tour of duty started in early 1860 as Hiram’s unit of the 4th United States Infantry had been ordered to help maintain a safe mail route to the West Coast, protect gold-seeking pioneers, and provide defense against warring Native tribes.

Her account of the trip, chronicled in her booklet, Reminiscences of an Army Woman, penned sometime after 1867, reveals a woman who loved her husband enough to stay with him no matter where he was ordered to go, a continuous theme among women who traveled with the military early on.

The newlyweds started their trip by sailing out of New York and traipsing across the Isthmus of Panama.

“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.”

From San Francisco, the couple headed to Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory, where they expected to be stationed. As soon as they arrived, however, they were ordered to Los Angeles to begin the difficult and dangerous journey to Fort Yuma.

Alice was one of the few officers’ wives to travel with the troops this early in the Indian campaigns.

“The length of the marches across the desert had to be made according to where we could find wood and water,” she wrote, “both of which were scarce articles — so the day’s journey varied from ten to fifteen miles, longer marches could not be made in the burning sun and heavy sand. We were awakened by fife and drum sounding reveille as early at 3 a.m. some mornings, when there was a longer march to be made that day, so that we could be out on the road before sunrise.

“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.

“The officers and men led the line, next came the ambulances or carriages with officers’ families, then the line of wagons of six mule teams hauling the tents, baggage, etc. The last named had to travel very slowly and late getting into camp with the stuff, for which we could do nothing but patiently wait.”

Alice and her party were not immune to desert hallucinations that weary, thirst-driven travelers often believed they saw as they gazed into the blazing sun.

“We were once entertained by a very beautiful mirage which looked like a large city in the distance, and which we never seemed quite able to reach.”

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.”

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Post housing also left her less than satisfied. “The quarters were built of adobe and three feet thick,” she said, “They did not keep the heat out, for the walls were so hot on the inside that you could scarcely bear your hand on them during the summer.”

It did not take her long to adapt to sleeping outside where it was somewhat cooler than in their stuffy cramped house, although the “cots had to be carefully screened from mosquitoes, as they were not of the ordinary kind but very large and very fierce, leaving a stream of blood trickling down from their bite.”

Alice had few women companions that first summer and considered herself the only white woman at the fort, discounting the camp laundresses, usually wives of enlisted men.

“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.”

It only rained twice while Alice was at Fort Yuma, but her biggest complaint was the lack of churches. “In all my year and a half at Fort Yuma,” she said, “I never saw a church or a priest.”

At the onset of the Civil War, Hiram’s unit was called back to the states. “As it was in the cool season,” Alice wrote, “we crossed the country very comfortably to San Diego.”

Safely back on the West Coast, Alice met other military wives who were also on their way home to a different type of war than what they experienced in the West. And she discovered some of these women had endured far more difficult surroundings.

“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.”

Alice arrived in New York just before Christmas 1861. As she and another Army wife headed down a hotel hallway on their way to dinner, they passed a mirror and did not recognize the two forlorn-looking women staring back at them. “We had left home young and fresh only a year and a half before and now our dearest friends did not know us when we reached our native land. Thin and brown, weighing less than 100 pounds, it was no wonder I was not recognized.”

After Hiram’s death in 1867, Alice entered the order of the Community of Saint Mary in Peekskill, New York. Sister Alice resided there until her death in 1918.

One of many women who followed their husbands into the early West, Alice’s recollections describe the trials and hardships women endured on early Army posts. They overcame unfamiliar and unpredictable surroundings and feared little after what they had witnessed and endured on their journeys.