Fifty Years of Treasure: The First Half-Century of Arizona Highways

THE COLORADO... from steamboats to London Bridge

The first river boat to brave the swift currents of the Colorado was the Uncle Sam brought in sections to the mouth of the river by Captain Turnbull in the schooner Capacity. It was put together on the flats near the mouth of the Colorado christened with its patriotic name loaded with supplies for Fort Yuma and started up the river about the middle of November, 1852. It reached Fort Yuma on December 3, after a run which occupied the better part of two weeks, being much impeded by an earthquake which changed the channel of the river. It made the return trip down stream in 15 hours and the next trip to Fort Yuma in three days.

The second steamer to navigate the Colorado was the General Jesup, which appeared on the river in the winter of 1853-54, under command of Captain George A. Johnson, who had assumed the task of delivering supplies at Fort Yuma. This boat named after Thomas S. Jesup, then Quartermaster-General of the United States Army was 104 feet long and 17 feet wide (27 feet over all), with an engine and boiler that was rated at 70 horsepower. It was a sidewheeler and could carry 60 tons of freight on 24 inches of water. On the first trip it made from the mouth of the river to Fort Yuma where it arrived on January 18, 1854-it carried 35 tons of freight a little more than one-half of its capacity.

The third steamer on the river was the Colorado which was built in sections in San Francisco and brought to the Colorado and put together at the shipyard at Yuma, which was located at what is now the foot of Main Street. It was ready for service in the autumn of 1855 and was at the time the fastest boat on the river.

The fourth vessel to ply the waters of the Colorado was the Explorer, a small steamer of steel construction, owned by the government and used by Lieutenant Ives in his exploration of the Colorado River. After Lieutenant Ives completed his work on the river, the Explorer was used on the Gila and Colorado, in the vicinity of Fort Yuma.

Sometime later the river in one of its capricious moods changed its channel and left the rusting hulk of the little Explorer lying some 20 miles from the main channel of the Colorado hardly visible in a thick grove of cottonwoods.

The Cocopah was the fifth steamer to enter the river traffic. This boat was built at the company's shipyard near the mouth of the Colorado and, after running a few years, was hauled out at Port Isabel and its hull built up and made into a portion of the company's warehouse. A succession of steamers and barges appeared on the river.

The Southern Pacific reached the right bank of the Colorado, nearly opposite Yuma, in the month of May, 1877, and by September of that same year a substantial wooden bridge (Howe truss design) had been constructed across the river.

The railroad company purchased all the steamers, barges and ferries on the river in order to prevent possible competition. At that time the oldest boats on the river were the Mohave and the Gila, while on the company's payroll were listed over a hundred employees. A few steamers were later built for the purpose of continuing to take care of the little up-river trade that could still be handled by them. By 1884 less than two score men were employed on the river.

The pictureque but remunerative business of steamboating on the Colorado is no more it vanished and became a fading memory years ago. But it had its day a day of romance and prosperity and then abandonment and oblivion, like unto most of the endeavors of man. BY JAMES M. BARNEY Excerpts from ARIZONA HIGHWAYS Magazine of February, 1952..

God and man have worked in various ways to make Arizona a land of wonders. God in strange and mysterious ways, and man by ways of almost unnatural ingenuity, such as bringing London Bridge and a bit of Britain to a desert isle in the Colorado River.