along the Gila to Yuma Crossing where it had its junction with the El Camino del Diablo an old Spanish route reestablished by Mexico from 1828. This established the first southern wagon road from New Mexico to California. This new wagon route became known as Cooke's Road, or Sonora Road, as much of the central part of the route passed through what was then the northern frontier of the state of Sonora, Mexico. In 1848, a U.S. Army expedition of 1st Dragoons under Major Lawrence P. Graham marched from Chihuahua to California, through Janos, then westward to strike Cooke's road at Guadalupe Pass. He then followed Cooke's wagon route along the Mexican border region but went farther west beyond the San Pedro River along an older Spanish trail to the headwaters of the Santa Cruz River which he followed to the Sonoran town of Santa Cruz then turned north on the old Spanish road to Tucson along the Santa Cruz River. Graham's detour, known as Major Graham’s Road, would be taken by most of the Forty-niners following Cooke's route the next year, despite its greater distance. From Yuma Crossing the Southern Emigrant Trail crossed the Colorado Desert, dipping south along the Colorado River, into Baja California, Mexico, (avoiding the vast Algodones Dunes to the west and northwest), to follow the waterholes along the Alamo and New Rivers, then northwest into California again across the desert to Carrizo Creek and the oasis at Vallecito. From Vallecito the trail then ran northwest into the Peninsular Ranges crossing Warners Pass to Warner's Ranch. From Warner's the road then ran either northwest to Los Angeles, (via Temecula, La Laguna, Temescal, Chino, La Puente and San Gabriel) or west southwest to San Diego via Santa Ysabel, San Pasqual and Rancho Peñasquitos. From either of these towns the traveler could continue north by land to the gold fields on the coast via the El Camino Real or over the old Tejon Pass into the San Joaquin Valley and then north by what would later become the Stockton–Los Angeles Road or via the El Camino Viejo. Alternatively they could take ships to San Francisco from San Diego or San Pedro. 1849–1854: Tucson Cutoff Subsequently, the distance of the Cooke–Graham route was drastically shortened by the Tucson Cutoff pioneered by John Coffee Hays with a party of forty-niners in late 1849. This route avoided the long distance traveled