Historic River Crossing

"His-and-her" rafts downriver for an entire month. Their rafts are among the nearly 4,000 watercraft that launch at Lee's Ferry for river runs during the year. Downstream from the launch ramp, beyond the place where the Paria River flows into the Colorado, three fishermen in chest-high waders cast wet flies into an eddy below a long riffle. Behind them a barking black Labrador retriever splashes in the icy shallows but soon retreats to shore. At 47 degrees year-round, the Colorado is too cold for even this waterloving dog. The scene becomes quieter at a cluster of buildings, fields, an orchard and a cemetery that comprise historic Lonely Dell Ranch, a short distance up a gravel road behind the launch area's parking lot. Beginning in the 1870s, Lonely Dell Ranch, which is now managed and protected by the National Park Service as part of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, was home for a succession of hardy men and women who ferried settlers moving from Utah to Arizona across the fickle and sometimes treacherous Colorado River. Countless generations have crossed the Colorado at the location of Lee's Ferry, the only place in 700 miles where the entrenching Canyon walls diminish and offer access to the river at each bank. When members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began to settle in Arizona, Lee's Ferry became the natural corridor from their homes in Utah. John D. Lee was "called" by the church prophet in 1872 to move his family to Paria Canyon and operate a ferry for the Mormons and all others who came this way. Lee was the first of the ferrymen who served during the following 57 years, and the crossing came to be known by his name.

And browse for their livestock withered in drought, the Johnsons somehow eked out a living. Then death struck. Five-year-old Jonathan was the first. His symptoms were not uncommon-fever and sore throat. Six days later, he was dead. Next, 11-year-old Laura took sick, followed by Permelia, nicknamed Millie, and, finally, the eldest child, 15-year-old Melinda. The family fasted, prayed, laid on hands and sang hymns. They dosed the children with home nostrums of the day-turpentine, coal oil, sulfur, liquor and saltpeter, and mercuration of iron - and allowed a visiting Cherokee Indian to administer his remedy of liquor and potassium nitrate every seven minutes.

Nothing helped. In less than two months, all four children were dead and buried side by side in a small cemetery near a bend in the Paria River. Belatedly, the cause of death was determined to be diphtheria, unwittingly borne to Lee's Ferry when the Johnsons took a family into their home while they waited for the river flow to drop for safe crossing. The visitors had buried a child by the side of the trail just days before, dead of an unnamed illness. His Mormon faith taught Warren Johnson that the hardships of his mission at Lee's Ferry would earn him God's favor, but when his children died, he felt forsaken. He revealed his raw anguish in a Another ferryman, Warren Johnson, saw his faith sorely tested when four of his children died in the summer of 1891. For 16 years, Johnson, a devout Mormon, and his wife, Permelia, had lived at Lee's Ferry. They tilled the rocky soil and planted crops, built shelters for themselves and their animals, erected a blacksmith shop and sorghum press, constructed earthen dams to capture the Paria River's waters for irrigation-and when the rampaging river breached the dams, drowning their crops, they rebuilt and replanted. When hostile Navajo or Paiute Indians threatened, Johnson pacified them. When the untamed Colorado at their doorstep ran wild, wrecking the ferry Johnson operated, he constructed a new one. When pioneers complained that Lee's Backbone, the wagon track worn from the rock face on the south side of the Colorado, was too hazardous, Johnson and his crew hacked out an alternate route, called "Johnson cutoff." When their own food cache ran low and browse for their livestock withered in drought, the Johnsons somehow eked out a living. Then death struck. Five-year-old Jonathan was the first. His symptoms wereOne man's feet froze when he LOST HIS WAY in a snowstorm; he died of blood poisoning.... Pneumonia killed another. A mother and infant died during childbirth...

letter to church elders: “What have we done that the Lord has left us?” Likening Johnson's afflictions to those of the biblical Job, church prophet Wilford Woodruff replied that he had done no wrong and urged Johnson to remain steadfast. Johnson persevered as ferryman at the “Mormon Crossing” for another five years until a haywagon he was driving overturned, throwing him to the ground. His broken back paralyzed him permanently, so the Johnsons moved from Paria Canyon after 20 years of offering ferry service as well as a helping hand to anyone in need.

The deaths of the Johnson children were neither the first nor the last at Lee's Ferry. Kanab, Utah, was a three-day ride north and Tuba City, three days south, so there was little help for anyone felled by accident or illness. One man's feet froze when he lost his way in a snowstorm; he died of blood poisoning. Another man, despondent over a divorce and loss of family, drank himself to death. Pneumonia killed another. A mother and infant died during childbirth; a toddler was killed when a loaded shotgun accidentally discharged.

Mishaps involving animals, machinery and ferryboats were common. A rearing horse fell and crushed the thighbone ofJim Emett's son, Bill. Emett, Warren Johnson's successor as ferry proprietor, set the fracture without a cast. The leg healed improperly, leaving Bill with a lifelong limp.

Strong currents sometimes wrenched ferryboats from their moorings and swept them downstream to shatter against rocks. Cables and ropes snapped, dumping people, wagons, farm equipment and livestock overboard. Strong swimmers saved themselves; a pet dog, a Newfoundland, once swam out and pulled its master safely to shore.

In times of drought, river flow was reduced to a trickle, and travelers could wade across; sometimes in winter they could cross on solid ice. But during spring runoff, when more than 100,000 cubic feet of water per second hurled past Lee's Ferry, crossing was impossible. Other times it was simply treacherous. Seven people drowned at the crossing, the first being Lorenzo Wesley Roundy, a Mormon bishop, who attempted an ill-advised ferry during a spring flood surge. Ferryman Johnson, also thrown into the river, clung to a floating wagon and was plucked from the roiling waters by men rowing a skiff.

Once they crossed the Colorado, Mormon pioneers hightailed south to Navajo Spring on today's Navajo Indian Reservation. There they found decent grazing for sheep and cattle, reliable water and stone cabins for shelter. Some pioneers marked their passing by pecking their names and dates of travel onto the dark varnish of nearby boulders: "To St. John,s [sic] Geo. Brown Of Summit County Utah September 29, '84"

One inscription, “Herman Snow 1881,” is upside down. Was Snow a prankster? Or had the boulder tumbled over in a flash flood? An old and oddly written name, “Namattics [or “N. Amattics”?], Oct. 8, 1876,” is nearly indecipherable.

It was a rough life at the ferry, but not without rustic diversions. When work crews were on hand to excavate a road into the side of a hill (a dugway), construct ferryboats or string cables across the river, there was much merrymaking. In her diary, Sadie Staker, a Lee's Ferry schoolteacher, writes of dancing to fiddle tunes until midnight.

And there were well-known passersby. One famous traveler was William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who crossed at Lee's Ferry in 1892, accompanied by his usual Wild West Show entourage and a group of Englishmen looking to develop a hunting lodge on the Kaibab Plateau.

A 35-year-old New York dentist, Pearl Zane Grey, showed up in 1906. He was enthralled by the people he met, notably Jim Emett and a character named Buffalo Jones. The protagonist of Grey's Heritage of the Desert, August Naab, was based on Emett. Many incidents recounted by Emett, a gifted storyteller himself, are described in Zane Grey's novels of the Western frontier.

Traveling to the Arizona Strip, Territorial historian Sharlot Hall crossed at Lee's Ferry in 1911. Of her wagon ride along the dugway on the Colorado's south bank, she wrote: “The road looked as if it had been cut out of the red clay with a pocket knife. Sometimes it hung out over the river so we seemed sliding into the muddy current.

Two big construction projects CHANGED LEE'S FERRY FOREVER. The first was the completion of Navajo Bridge... The second was the erection of Glen Canyon Dam.

In 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt passed through Lee's Ferry on a hunting trip. A photograph shows the ever-vigorous Teddy in wirerimmed spectacles, a slouch hat, galluses and puttees chopping wood.

Robert Stanton, an engineer, and Charles Spencer, a promoter and schemer, were two who came to Lee's Ferry and stayed at least for a while. Stanton's survey party arrived in July 1889 to evaluate the feasibility of building a railroad through the Grand Canyon. To do so, they had to run the Colorado River. The party's first attempt was aborted when three in the group drowned.

Later that year, Stanton returned to try again, arriving at Lee's Ferry on December 23. An old photo shows Stanton's group sitting at Christmas dinner spread on an outdoor table, courtesy of the Warren Johnson family. Lacking only fresh vegetables, the menu included three soups, turkey, beef, chicken, “Colorado River salmon,” plum pudding and various cakes and pies.

When his railroad dream proved too costly, Stanton turned his attention to gold mining, for which he imported large dredges to remove the precious ore from Colorado River silts. But the gold particles were too fine to be processed, the mining operation failed and Stanton had to place his company in receivership.

Stanton's failure did not deter Spencer. Within a year, starting in 1910, Spencer had radically altered Lee's Ferry. The fort, which the Mormons had built as protection against Indians and later had been Robert Stanton's headquarters, was converted into a mess hall. A blacksmith shop, laboratory and bunkhouses were put up, and work crews were hired.

Overnight, Lee's Ferry, formerly a scene of pastoral tranquility, became a clanking, stinking, industrial gold-mining operation. Steam boilers belched coal smoke while pipe dredges injected air and water into the soft Chinle shale to displace tons of earth, and water sucked from the Colorado was mixed with shale and carried by flume to amalgamators.

To transport coal for the boilers, Spencer's crew improved an ancient trail descending the Echo Cliffs and renamed it the Spencer Trail. When that plan didn't work, Spencer commissioned a 92-foot steamboat, a stern-wheeler named, naturally, the Charles H. Spencer, to haul coal 28 miles downstream from Warm Creek. Like Stanton before him, Spencer could not profitably separate gold from the Chinle shale, and his mining enterprise failed. Equipment and buildings were abandoned, and the Charles H. Spencer sank in a few feet of water. Part of its hull and boiler are still visible in the Colorado's clear waters.

Two big construction projects changed Lee's Ferry forever. The first was the completion of Navajo Bridge, which ended the era of pioneer ferrying. The second was the erection of Glen Canyon Dam, which tamed the once mighty Colorado River.

The National Park Service bought Lee's Ferry and Lonely Dell Ranch in 1974, becoming guardians of its place in history and overseers of its continuation as a center of activity for world-class fishing, wilderness adventure and as the takeoff point for the ultimate experience in riverrafting. All