The Chronicles Of Grant County:
Little Walnut

February 3, 2021

Signage welcomes visitors to the Little Walnut Picnic Area in the Gila National Forest.
(The photo was provided by the U S Forest Service, August 31, 2017.)

“Little Walnut” is the name of a variety of geographic features and locales within Grant County.  The names all seem to evolve from the Little Walnut Creek.  This stream likely received its name from the Walnut trees along the waterbody.  The U S Geological Survey (USGS) indicated that the stream begins near Reading Mountain.

According to the USGS, there is a “Big Walnut Creek” and a “Little Walnut Creek.”  The names “North Fork of the Walnut Creek” and “Walnut Creek” are also used, according to the USGS.  “Walnut Creek” was noted as the name of a stream north of Silver City since at least the early 1890s.

In naming creeks and rivers in the United States, it is not unusual to have “Big” and “Little” or “North” and “South” designations for streams with tributaries.  “Big” is typically used to designate wider, deeper creeks, while narrower, shallower creeks are usually named “Little.”

Little Walnut Road, Old Little Walnut Road, and Little Walnut Village each received their names from the name of the stream.  “Little Walnut” is also used for picnic areas and trails within the Gila National Forest.  The Little Walnut Picnic Area is currently closed due to the COVID 19 Pandemic.  You can view the Little Walnut Trail System by clicking here.

From 1933 to 1942, Camp Whitehall was located along Little Walnut Creek.  This Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp – also known as the “Little Walnut Camp” – was one of several located within the Gila National Forest during the Great Depression.  Young people worked on “…erosion control, fence construction, road maintenance/construction, [and] re-vegetation,” according to The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Gila National Forest report issued by the Gila National Forest in 2016.  Stone used to help build the Little Walnut Picnic Area and various other projects, according to that same report, likely was secured by members of the CCC from a quarry within the Gila National Forest.

For a number of years, the water flowing through the Little Walnut Creek was considered so polluted that a section of land adjacent to the stream was declared a Superfund Site.  The U S Fish and Wildlife Service noted that this site – the former location of the Cleveland Mill – included an “abandoned lead, zinc, and copper mine and mill that operated in the early 1900s.”  According to a report from this Federal agency, four acres of the site was in mountainous terrain and fourteen acres extended “…down a drainage area and into the streambed of Little Walnut Creek.”

The report continued by explaining that “Tailings from the mill were uncovered, unstabilized and unlined, and had washed into Little Walnut Creek causing acidification and metal contamination of water, soils, sediments, and biota.  Residential wells along the creek, though not contaminated with metals, contained other chemical parameters which indicated that they been affected by the mine tailings.”

The area was cleaned to meet the standards set by the Federal government;  the site “was deleted from the National Priorities List on July 23, 2001,” according to the report from U S Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Little Walnut East Picnic Area is located in the Gila National Forest.
(The photo was provided by the United States Forest Service, August 31, 2017.)

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 Contact Richard McDonough at chroniclesofgrantcounty@mail.com.

© 2021 Richard McDonough