Mohave 2 had its heyday on Colorado River

During the latter half of the 19th century, the isolated residents along the Colorado River relied heavily on grand steamboats to deliver goods and supplies.

Beginning in about 1852, the freight was transferred from seafaring vessels to flat-bottomed steamships at Robinson's Landing, which was located in Baja California on the banks of the Colorado River delta. The supplies were then delivered to destinations up the river, including Fort Yuma.

During this time, the Colorado River Steam Navigation Co. was founded. It would become the largest and most well-known steamboat venture on the river. After an initial failure using a sidewheeler, the company turned to sternwheeler steamboats in 1855.

The demand for freight shipment steadily increased following a mining boom along the river in 1862 and the completion of the Yuma Quartermaster Depot, which supported Army posts throughout the region, in 1864.

Due to the ever-increasing river traffic, Port Isabel, a seaport also located in the river delta, was constructed and in use by 1865.

By the 1870s, the steamboat freight delivery business was booming. In 1875 alone, the Colorado River Steam Navigation Co. shipped over 4,500 tons of freight to Yuma.

The amount of freight shipped out of Yuma that year was also impressive and included 1,000 tons of mineral ore, 60 tons of wool, 60 tons of general merchandise, 6,170 tons of hides, 1,400 tons of pelts and 1,440 tons of way freight.

To keep up with the demand, the company commissioned a huge new steamboat named the Mohave 2. She was built in Port Isabel and launched in February 1876. The ship was the only double-stack steamer ever put on the Colorado River.

According to historical documents, its outward appearance resembled the palatial riverboats of the Mississippi, although its interior furnishings were much less posh. It was in great demand as a grand excursion boat on the Colorado but was primarily a work boat.

The Mohave 2 drew only a foot of water, which permitted it to venture farther up the river and farther into the sloughs than any other boat at the time. With Capt. Jack Mellon at the helm, it made 20 trips to the mouth of the Virgin River nearly 600 miles up the Colorado.

During 1877 and 1878, the Colorado Steam Navigation Co. did a prosperous business carrying nearly all the freight for northern and central Arizona from the railroad at Yuma to shipping hubs upriver. This amounted to roughly 10,000 tons of freight a year.

But by 1879, the railroad system had become much more extensive and severely curtailed the steamboat business. The previous year had provided enough freight to keep the four boats of the Colorado Steam Navigation Co. busy, but the coming of the railroads made it difficult to keep even one vessel in business.

Two boats in the fleet were retired and dismantled two years later, leaving only the Gila and the Mohave 2 on the river to work with a few barges.

The river towns were hard hit by the loss of trade, and the population of Yuma fell from around 1,500 to about 500.

According to historical documents, every business was stagnated and the press damned the Southern Pacific owners for having “practically withdrawn their steamers from the river.”

In the early 1880s, the two remaining steamboats continued to find work in the upper Colorado River, which was in the middle of a mining boom at the time. However, the mining business eventually faded and the only upriver trade was to the mines at Eldorado Canyon and Mineral Park in addition to the Army at Fort Mojave.

Although this sustained the riverboats for a time, much of the business was lost when the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad crossed the upper river.

In May 1883, construction crews began to build a bridge across the Colorado River 25 miles below Fort Mojave that would connect the Arizona rail lines to the California rail lines. A tent town on the California side of the river near the bridge would become Needles and quickly became the largest port above Yuma.

For three months, the crews struggled to build a bridge at the site. The river was at flood stage and the channel was 1,600 feet wide at the that point with no solid banks on either side.

The swift current constantly uprooted the bridge pilings. A wide gap midstream resisted all efforts before it was finally conquered with the aid of the Mohave 2 and a pile driver mounted on a barge.

Once completed, the “flimsy looking structure” was criticized for not having a drawbridge that would allow river traffic to pass.

Before the bridge blocked river traffic completely, Capt. Mellon took the Mohave 2 and its barge up river to carry freight above Needles while the steamship Gila, then captained by Isaac Polhamus, remained below the bridge to handle the trade on the lower river.

The bridge at Needles, having been poorly built, was swept away entirely by currents in 1884, once more opening up the river to traffic.

Because the railroad continued to siphon business away from the steamship company, Capt. Mellon chose to take the Mohave 2 back to Yuma while the bridge was down and tied it up at dock.

Following this, the steamship Gila was the only vessel in the fleet to remain in service and made trips upriver only about once every six weeks.

Noting how the Colorado River Steam Navigation Co. had operated as many as five steamers and five barges during the heyday of the steamboat business, the editor of the Yuma Sentinel wrote, “How the mighty have fallen. From a powerful corporation it has been reduced almost to naught … Water transportation can never compete with railroads.”

Compounding the problem, a rival steamer, the St. Vallier, was put on the river by another company toward the end of the century and came into full use in 1900.

The St. Vallier's presence on the river prompted Polhamus and Mellon to question their aging ships, and they decided to build a new vessel named the Cochan, using the engine from the Gila at a cost of $27,000. It was launched on Nov. 8, 1899, and went into service in early 1900 to carry freight for the Searchlight Mines.

In January 1900, Polhamus ran the Mohave 2 aground into Jaeger's Slough, where he left her to rot, a less-than-honorable end for such a grand steamboat.

Chris McDaniel can be reached at cmcdaniel@yumasun.com or 539-6849.