Personalities of the Colorado

(Far left) "Tubing," a traditional summertime sport, on the Colorado River near Parker. Bill Brennan The London Bridge on the Colorado River at Lake Havasu City. Laurence Laurie and Associates (Below left) The Lake Havasu City Classic World Outboard Championship is held each year on Thanksgiving weekend. Carlos Elmer Havasu Springs Resort. Another mining claim on the California side became Havasu Landing. A remote place, called Road's End, is now Havasu Palms.

Individuals squatted on government land up and down the river and its lakes. They built cabins and even boat launch-ing ramps.

People swarmed to the California side of the Colorado River, from Overton, Nevada, to Winterhaven, California, even squatting on Indian Reservations.

Soon the sheer force of public demand called for more elaborate marinas and facilities.

Ham Pratt, a football coach from Prescott, Arizona, welded 55-gallon oil drums water tight and coated them with tar to make the first floating docks at Katherine Landing, now Lake Mohave Resort. Planks and barrels were shaped into a wharf at Willow Beach, now an elaborate resort. At other places you simply tied your boat to a stump or pulled it up on the sand.

The multiplying man-day use of the lakes called for public boat launching ramps. If there wasn't one there, the fishermen built one, as they did at Huala-pai Wash, Kingman Wash, Temple Bar and Pierce's Ferry on Lake Mead. They pioneered roads and ramps on Lake Mohave, Lake Havasu and Martinez.

But neither Ham Pratt nor the Park Service anticipated the mile-and-a-half long string of cars with boat trailers on Memorial Day weekends, waiting to launch a boat. Nor was it foreseen that 559,830 cars would use the access road during the first six months of 1976 to get into Lake Mohave Resort.

While Murl Emery and Ham Pratt pioneered recreational developments on Lake Mead and Lake Mohave, Tommy Kinder at Parker, wasn't far behind.

Kinder had served as a roustabout, operator and pilot for the ferry boat "The Nellie T. Bush," at Parker, Arizona.

Kinder had a mining claim on the California side of the Colorado River, two miles above the Parker railroad bridge.

He hired Seig Hall, a cotton farmer at Parker, to bulldoze the willows and mes-quite thickets and level the ground for the first trailer park and boat landing on what is now called the Parker Strip.

On the Arizona side of the river, above Parker, a road of sorts had probed north-ward out of Parker to Cienega Springs.

Johnnie and Jeannie Branson pushed a road on from that point another eight miles to a river frontage they had bought.

Here they developed the first mobile home, motel and fishing camp on the Ari-zona side of the Parker Strip.

One time, Johnnie and this writer went by jeep up some desert washes, over some mountain ridges, bridged a crevasse and went all the way to Parker Dam. We made our own road.

But, order soon grew out of chaos.

The cowboy cook who fried eggs and served "saddle blankets" at Lake Mohave Resort was soon replaced by a chef - with credentials! And waitresses started combing their hair and some even put down their cigarettes before bringing you morning coffee.

Changes took place in watercraft, too: They became more refined and 100horepower outboards replaced the old fishing motors. And then a new breed of water sport enthusiast showed up the water skier and changed the habits andlife-

style of all the people on the Colorado

River.

The Parker Strip, that 17-mile stretch above the headgate diversion dam and below Parker Dam, was found to be one of the finest fresh water skiing areas in the world. The flow of the river was controlled by Parker Dam and the strip was protected from the wind by the river banks.

Now as many as 50,000 weekenders will come to the Parker Strip and lower Lake Havasu on a single weekend. And most of the cars or vans will be towing a speedboat of some kind.

For area oldtimers it is hard to believe the changes that have taken place. For example, back before the dams were built, there wasn't a continuous road on the Arizona side of the river. And what primitive roads there were were not even mapped. You might be able to travel along the river in sections if you knew your way through the mesquite thickets, which canyons to follow and where to cross the ridges.

Today four-lane highways span most of its length.

Less than ten years ago, in the southern part of Nevada, where it comes to a point to join with Arizona and Califor-nia to form a tri-state corner, you had to nose your car through brush, desert wil-lows and mesquite southward from Davis Dam to get to a gambling place called "The Bob Cat."

Other area changes include the development of such Nevada-style casinos as the resplendent Nevada Club, the Monte Carlo and The Riverside Resort and Hotel.

Today transportation by bus is furnished by the casinos from all nearby towns and cities. And, if you want to, you can go back and forth from Arizona to Nevada by water taxi. Or if you feel adventurous, you can go to the airport and climb in a helicopter and fly back and forth across the river.

Nearly 20 years ago, ARIZONA HIGH-WAYS, in a special feature on Lake Havasu, said of the old Site Six, the rest camp for fatigued airmen training for World War II, "that it will equal those of Southern France, or the sunny shore of North Africa, or our own Caribbeans."

Site Six did just that it became Lake Havasu City!

Still another area tourist attraction which has bloomed is Boulder City, Nevada. Created in 1931 as a government town, it served as a control center for the building of Hoover Dam.

Afterward, Boulder City continued as the regional headquarters of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Park Service. Federal employees looked upon Boulder City as "home" and when they retired, they stayed as residents.

Because of its location between Lake Mead and Lake Mohave and its proximity to Hoover Dam, a major tourist attraction, Boulder City serves as a crossroads for tourists and vacationers.

Today, Boulder City is still the headquarters of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Park Service. All federal reclamation and energy seeking projects for the entire Colorado River Drainage System are monitored here.

While we've talked mostly about the White Man and his impact upon the Colorado River System, he hasn't been the only one to benefit from its economic development, however.

The Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, with headquarters at Needles, California, recently leased nearly 13,000 acres of its 41,000-acre reservation to a corporation for farming and economic development and the location of a new city with an estimated population of 100,000.

This is just the beginning of a comprehensive plan for the Mojaves, who historically claimed all the lands on both sides of the Colorado River, from what is now Cottonwood Cove on Lake Mohave southward to the Palo Verde Slough, where a nuclear plant is to be built.

Another of the tribes to reap economic advantage from the area are the Chemehuevis, whose reservation sits directly across the river from Lake Havasu City. The Chemehuevi Indians have historically claimed a portion of the west side of present day Lake Havasu.

Along with other planned improvements, Havasu Landing, once a mining claim and now a large marina and mobile home park, has been bought back by the Chemehuevis, as of June, 1976. The landing will give them access to Lake Havasu. The Chemehuevis will be catering to the tourist and vacationer, the fisherman and the water sports enthusiast from California.

Then down at Parker, Arizona, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, composed of the original Mojave and Chemehuevi Indians, plus some Navajo and Hopi who moved there in the early 1900s, are administering 268,000 acres of very fertile river bottom land, planning for agriculture, industry and recreation.

But despite all the changes which have made the Colorado River basin uniquely modern, today, one can still go back through 200 years of time and see it almost as it was when the Spanish explorers first laid eyes on it!

Each May, the Colorado River Pilot's Association of Blythe, California, takes a river cruise from Blythe to Martinez Lake and back.

The cruise takes off on Saturday and comes back upriver on Sunday. Groups of boats are piloted through a maze of sand bars, shoals and underwater obstacles.

South of Cibola Bridge, the Colorado River has been left in its pristine condition. Here you'll find banks lined with tules, watergrasses, willows, all screening hidden backwaters, lagoons and small lakes, while along the banks you'll see the ruins of many earlier adventures and enterprises: abandoned mines, farms, cattle raising operations, coke ovens, mining ventures and the remains of old steamer docking stations.

You'll also see (and hear about) such river landmarks as Lighthouse Rock, Picacho Peak, Pilot's Knob, Draper's Landing, and "The Indian Loving Rocks" a rocky reef, you'll be told, that may have combed the bottom out of the "General Jessup" on its return trip from El Dorado Canyon in 1858, now reduced to taking off the propellors from the outboards of careless boatmen.

Once a turbulent and feared red river, this El Rio Colorado of Father Garces, like a wild stallion, has been corralled to become a gentle and faithful workhorse.