A FIRE BOAT ON THE COLORADO

Just months before Buchanan sent troops to Utah, the military had assigned Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives to take a small company of men to explore the navigability of the Colorado River. They launched from Yuma and headed north. As they left, Ives received word of the situation in Utah and his orders now also included determining if troops could be transported via the river to Utah.

Jacob Hamblin and a party of men visited some Iyat and Paiute people near Las Vegas in the spring of 1858 and heard tales from them about a “fire boat” on the Colorado River. They had seen Ives steamboat expedition. Hamblin and his men went to investigate and observed the steamboat from a distance. He sent Thales Haskell to investigate. Haskell hailed the boat and claimed he was leaving the Mormons. He learned from the crew that one of their objectives was to determine if the Colorado River could transport troops into Utah. After the Utah War had been resolved, Brigham Young used this information to investigate if the Colorado River could possibly be used to transport freight.

A COLORADO HIGHWAY

Transporting goods and materials to Utah Territory by land was difficult. Brigham Young, encouraged by the military exploration of the Colorado River, sought to connect his settlements to Pacific trade routes via the river and the Gulf of California. Government reports indicated that the river was navigable as far north as Black Canyon, near present-day Hoover Dam.

ST. THOMAS & CALLVILLE

Young assigned Anson Call to locate a site to build a landing on the Colorado River. Call arrived in St. George on November 24, 1864, where he provisioned his party and enlisted Jacob Hamblin to serve as guide and interpreter. The party used a 14-foot flatboat to navigate the river as far as Hardyville and then back to where they identified the most suitable location named Call’s Landing.

The men built the landing and established the towns of Callville and St. Thomas. The latter was located between the Virgin and Muddy rivers. They planned to receive freight at Call’s Landing then transport it to St. Thomas where the goods could be hauled by land to St. George and other Latter-day Saint towns.

However, the road proved to be soft with sediment causing wagons to easily get stuck. The enterprise struggled for several years and was finally abandoned when the completed transcontinental railroad provided a better option in 1869.

LEE’S FERRY

For years the spot where Lee’s Ferry stands today was a well known crossing area for the generations of indigenous people who called the Colorado Plateau home. In the 18th century, native scouts first introduced the Lee’s Ferry to European settlers as an attempt to escort the Domínguez–Escalante expedition across the Colorado River. Eventually they lead them to a crossing further up the river due to high water and quick currents.

Later, in the late 19th century when the missions in Southern Utah and Northern Arizona started to become populated with Latter-day Saints from the Salt Lake Valley, Lee’s Ferry was used to connect the upper Colorado communities to the lower Colorado missions and settlements. It was used as a fort for a time, eventually winding up in the hands of John D. Lee, who the area is currently named after, as an escape from his involvement of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Lee’s Ferry owned and operated by his family for years, eventually being bought by the Church of Jesus Christ to continue its operation until it closed in 1929 after the Navajo Bridge was completed.