River, New Mexico and Arizona, U.S. Rising in southwestern New Mexico in the Elk Mountains, near the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument , it flows 630 mi (1,015 km) west over desert land to the Colorado River at Yuma, Ariz.
Coolidge Dam (1928) on the Gila near Globe, Ariz., is used for irrigation; the dam, together with Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River , stores all available surface water, so the Gila riverbed is dry down to the Colorado. Its valley is the chief habitat of the Gila monster .