Highway of the Devil – once a 250-mile link between the northwestern frontier of Mexico and the colonies of California, began at Caborca, in Mexico’s state of Sonora. It extended north northwest across the desert to what is today the United States/Mexican border. It turned west northwest and followed the border through a phantasmagoria landscape of organ pipe cactus, desert flats, drifting sand dunes, ancient lava flows and searing summer heat, passing through the southern edges of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, and the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range. Marked by graves and headstones, it reached a merciful end at Yuma, Arizona.
The landscape has changed little since the coming of the early Spanish explorers, who chronicled their own passage across the region but gave us few insights into the local tribes they encountered—the Sand People or Sand Papagos, Yuhas and others.
El Camino del Diablo entered history when Francisco Vasquez de Coronado arrived in 1540, having led his famed expedition from Mexico City to begin exploring the Southwest in search of the mythical seven cities of Cibola with their streets of gold. At an Indian village near where Caborca now stands, Coronado heard of a juncture of two major rivers some three to four weeks travel to the west. He dispatched one of his captains, Melchoir Diaz, to lead a side expedition to investigate the report.
Diaz assembled his party and supplies and set out across the desert, the first Spanish "entrada," or excursion, into the region. The hardships they encountered prompted them to name the route "El Camino del Diablo." Padre Eusibio Kino, a Jesuit priest, undertook the next major exploration of the area late in the 17th century. He mapped the area and located most of the water stops. Juan Bautista de Anza led 200 colonists from Tubac, Arizona, across part of the trail in 1775 on his way to found the city of San Francisco.
If I was going to hunt this trail I would research Padre Eusibio Kino and try to find a copy of the map he made of the trail. The water hole even if dry now would be your best starting point.
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