Page:California Historical Society Quarterly vol 22.djvu/19

 the Colorado in 1862, an added impetus was given the river trade, and as a result, the George A. Johnson Company was forced to increase its carrying capacity. In May 1859, construction was begun on a machine shop at Colorado City, opposite Yuma, and this same year the fifth steamer to operate on the river was launched. She was constructed at the Gridiron, thirty-five miles north of Robinson's Landing, and arrived at Yuma on her maiden voyage on September 1, 1859.^^ She was 140 feet long, had a capacity of 100 tons and was named the Cocopah in honor of the Indian tribes on the river delta.

By 1861 the General Jesup was scrapped, and the demands of increased mining activity made it imperative that she be replaced by a larger and more powerful steamer. Two years later the Mohave, the sixth steamer to appear on the Colorado, was launched at Yuma.^e She was 133 feet long, 28 feet in width of beam and had a capacity of 192.61 tons. By 1864 the Colorado Steam Navigation Company had been on the river for ten years.^^ It was operating three vessels, the Colorado, the Cocopah, and the Mohave, each costing from twenty to forty thousand dollars, and trips were being made as far up the river as Fort Mohave, three hundred miles above Yuma.^^

The last years of the period of experimentation and development were marked by an increasing demand on the part of the citizens of Arizona for more adequate transportation facilities. During both the flood season and low water, goods often piled up at the mouth of the river awaiting shipment to the interior while the populace fumed at the delay. Writing in December 1863, a correspondent commented:

"The steamer left here some eighteen days since to go to Fort Mohave, for seventeen of which she has lain high and dry on a sand bar, about thirty miles above La Paz. Provisions are very dear. ... It is reported here that over one thousand tons of freight are now lying at Fort Yuma and at the mouth of the river, waiting for conveyance hither . . . the steamer cannot possibly bring more than thirty tons of freight per trip. Articles that were shipped on the Ford about the first of September have not arrived yet.^^"

A similar letter written in December of that year states that it took eight days to make a round trip to the mouth of the river from Yuma and about forty days to Fort Mohave. There were then six hundred tons of freight at the mouth of the river awaiting shipment.^° It was this dissatisfaction which led to the founding of a rival company in 1 864 and the opening of the second phase of steam navigation on the Colorado River, a period distinguished by keen commercial rivalry and by an attempt to extend the commerce of the river north to the Utah settlements.

Almost from the time of their arrival in Salt Lake Valley in July 1 847, the Mormon people took measures to establish economic connections with the Pacific Coast. In November they sent Porter D. Rockwell, Jefferson Hunt,