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St. Vallier – Colorado River Steamship
The St. Vallier (sometimes spelled St. Valier) was a stern-wheel steamboat and the first steel-hulled vessel to operate on the Colorado River. It was built in early 1899 at Needles, California, by the Santa Ana Mining Company, which held placer mining claims upriver and sought reliable transport for supplies and equipment.
Construction occurred amid a late-19th-century revival of river traffic driven by mining activity in southern Nevada and western Arizona. The boat remained inactive through much of 1899 and into 1900 due to ownership litigation after the mining company faced financial trouble and creditors attached the vessel. Its maiden voyage came in the summer of 1900 under Captain John W. Babson (a former railroad man), beginning limited freight service.
In December 1901 the Mexican-Colorado Navigation Company acquired it from the Santa Ana creditors. The new owners added four passenger cabins on the upper deck, enabling regular Yuma–Needles runs that carried both freight and passengers.
Design Principles and Specifications
Colorado River steamboats were engineered for an exceptionally difficult waterway: shallow depths (often under two feet in places), shifting sandbars, swift currents, seasonal floods and low water, and braided channels. Traditional deep-draft ocean or Mississippi-style designs were unusable.
Key design principles embodied in the St. Vallier included:
- Steel hull: It was the first steel-hulled steamer on the river, offering greater durability and resistance to the abrasive, silty water and frequent groundings than the wooden hulls that dominated earlier fleets.
- Stern-wheel propulsion: A rear paddlewheel provided efficient power in shallow water, better maneuverability in tight channels, and less vulnerability to floating debris than side-wheels.
- Light draft and shallow-draft hull form: Dimensions are reported inconsistently across sources (reflecting measurement variations or possible refits), but typical figures are roughly 74 feet in length by 17 feet beam (alternative accounts give ~92 feet length, 17-foot beam, and ~74–92 tons). The design prioritized minimal draft so the vessel could operate over sandbars and in low-water conditions common on the lower Colorado.
- Practical freight-and-passenger configuration: After the 1901 refit, upper-deck cabins allowed mixed service while the main deck and any towed barges handled cargo such as lumber, mining machinery, railroad rails, and supplies.
These features aligned with the broader evolution of Colorado River boats, which consistently emphasized extreme shallow draft (often 1–2 feet loaded), flat or lightly rounded bottoms, and robust yet lightweight construction suited to desert-river conditions.
Operational History and Role in Expanding Trade
The St. Vallier entered service during the final profitable phase of commercial steamboating on the lower Colorado, after the Southern Pacific Railroad reached Yuma in 1877 and began eroding long-distance river traffic. Remaining demand centered on remote mining districts (notably Searchlight and Quartette in Nevada) that still required river delivery of heavy equipment, provisions, and ore transport between railheads at Needles and Yuma.
Under the Mexican-Colorado Navigation Company it competed directly with the established Colorado Steam Navigation Company (operators of the Cochan, rebuilt from the older Gila) and later the Searchlight. It undercut rates on the Yuma–Needles corridor, hauling supplies that supported the late mining boom and local trade. This competition briefly stimulated service and kept freight moving to isolated camps that railroads had not yet fully reached.
After 1905 the boat’s role shifted toward engineering and reclamation work. It assisted the California Development Company and U.S. Reclamation Service during the Imperial Valley flood crisis (when the Colorado breached into the Salton Sink) and the construction of Laguna Dam. It ferried materials, equipment, and workers and was photographed working alongside brush dikes and canal intakes.
In February 1905 it sank near Yuma during flood-control operations at a canal intake; it was salvaged and sold for $750, then continued limited service under new ownership tied to irrigation projects. On March 25, 1909—shortly before Laguna Dam’s completion—it broke free from its moorings near Yuma, sank again, and was declared a total loss. Authorities dynamited the wreck to clear the channel.
Decline and Legacy
Laguna Dam (completed 1909) permanently blocked upstream navigation and, together with expanding railroads and the rise of trucks and smaller gasoline boats, ended the steamboat era on the lower Colorado. The St. Vallier was one of the last vessels of its type; commercial steam navigation effectively ceased within a few years (the Searchlight lingered into the mid-1910s).
Although short-lived, the St. Vallier illustrates the adaptive final chapter of river commerce in the Southwest. Its steel hull marked a technological step forward, its competitive service helped sustain mining logistics in the early 1900s, and its later use in reclamation projects contributed to the irrigation infrastructure that transformed the Imperial Valley and lower Colorado region. It remains a documented example of the specialized, shallow-draft sternwheelers that once linked desert mining camps, military posts, and emerging agricultural settlements before railroads and dams closed the river to commercial steam traffic.
Norton’s Landing, La Paz County Ghost Town
Norton’s Landing (also Norton’s or Nortons Landing) was a short-lived steamboat landing and mining settlement on the Colorado River in what was then Yuma County, Arizona Territory (now La Paz County, Arizona). It sat on a rocky point of land at about 213–215 feet elevation, roughly 52 miles upriver from Yuma, 4 miles above Picacho (California), and 18 miles below Clip, Arizona. Roads from the nearby mines in the Trigo Mountains met the river there, just east of Red Cloud Wash and Black Rock Wash.
Founding and Development
The landing developed to support the Red Cloud Mine and other claims in the Silver Mining District of the Trigo Mountains. Prospecting in the area dated to the mid-1860s under Jacob Snively, but activity largely lapsed after his death in 1871. The district revived in 1879 when George Sills, Neils Johnson, George W. Norton, and Gus Crawford relocated many abandoned silver claims.
The settlement and landing took their name from George W. Norton, a civil engineer who had supervised construction of the first railroad bridge across the Colorado River at Yuma in 1877. Norton owned the Red Cloud Mine and established a smelter (ore reduction works) at the landing itself. By about 1881 the Red Cloud Mining Company had a successful reduction works there processing copper, silver, and gold ores from the district. A general store operated at the site.
A post office named Norton’s opened on June 4, 1883, and operated until August 24, 1888 (mail then went to Yuma). It reopened September 3, 1891, and closed for good on March 13, 1894. The community persisted a bit longer; the Arizona Sentinel (Yuma) reported on April 17, 1897, that the once-well-known silver-district town was completely deserted because of low silver prices and mine closures. Residents moved to the then-flourishing camp at Picacho. One secondary account notes it was briefly known as Pacific City.
Role in the Colorado River Steamship Industry
Norton’s Landing functioned as a steamboat stop primarily in the 1880s–early 1890s (sources commonly list active years as roughly 1882–1894). It served as a transshipment point for supplies, machinery, provisions, and coal bound for the Silver District mines, and for outbound ore or concentrates. Steamboats of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company (and later operators under Southern Pacific influence after the railroad reached Yuma in 1877) called here while navigating the lower Colorado’s shallow, shifting channels, sandbars, and seasonal low water.
The landing formed part of a chain of river ports that included Castle Dome Landing, Picacho, Clip, Ehrenberg/La Paz, Hardyville, and others, stretching from the Gulf of California upstream toward the mining districts of Arizona, California, and Nevada. Freight rates and reliability on the river remained important for remote mines even after the railroad arrived at Yuma, though overall steamboat traffic declined as rail connections expanded. One historical assessment notes that the Silver District mines (including those served by Norton’s and Clip) had their own mills and therefore generated relatively limited steamboat business compared with earlier boom periods, but the landing still operated as a recognized stop.
Ships associated with service to the landing include vessels of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company fleet active in the relevant decades. Contemporary and later accounts specifically link the sternwheelers Gila (launched in the 1870s, a major workhorse on the lower river into the 1890s) and Mohave / Mohave II (the latter a larger 149-foot vessel of the mid-1870s) to service of Norton’s Landing and the surrounding district. These boats typically pushed or towed barges to increase capacity and operated when water levels permitted. Other CSNC steamers of the era (such as later vessels like Cochan) worked the same general route between Yuma and upriver points, though primary documentation of individual calls at Norton’s is sparse.
Steam navigation on the lower Colorado effectively ended after the Laguna Dam was completed in 1909, blocking the river; residual commercial traffic ceased around 1916.
Decline and Present Site
Falling silver prices in the 1880s–1890s, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893, competition from railroads, and high overland freight costs after river transport became less competitive caused the mines and the landing to close. By 1897 the town was empty. Today Norton’s Landing is a ghost town in La Paz County. Only scattered foundations, mining debris, and slag from the reduction works remain.
Norton’s Landing exemplifies the brief, specialized river ports that supported Arizona Territory’s mining economy in the final decades of Colorado River steamboating—linking remote desert claims to the wider commercial network until railroads and market forces rendered them obsolete.
Picacho, California – Imperial County Ghost Town
Picacho (on the lower Colorado River, California side; historically linked to Arizona Territory) was a gold-mining settlement and steamboat landing that flourished from the 1860s into the early 20th century.
Founding and Early History
The site lies along the Colorado River roughly 48 miles (77 km) upstream from Arizona City/Yuma (then in Arizona Territory), opposite Arizona-side landings such as Eureka and Williamsport. It takes its name from nearby Picacho Peak (Spanish for “peak” or “big peak”; earlier Anglo references sometimes called it Chimney Peak). The original townsite is now submerged under Imperial Reservoir; remaining mill ruins lie above the waterline within present-day Picacho State Recreation Area (California Historical Landmark #193).
Spanish explorers and prospectors likely worked placer gold in the area as early as around 1780. Sustained American-era activity began after the California Gold Rush and the establishment of Fort Yuma. In spring 1862, Sonora-born prospector José María Mendivil, traveling north from Yuma toward the La Paz gold discoveries, found placer gold in the washes near Picacho Peak. He returned later, homesteaded riverfront land, and laid out a townsite initially called Rio (soon renamed Picacho). Streets were named after his daughters. Early methods included dry-placering (shaking gravel on blankets to concentrate heavier gold particles).
Mining remained sporadic and small-scale through the 1860s–mid-1870s. Hard-rock development accelerated in the late 1870s. In 1878 (some accounts note an earlier arrastra around 1873), Yuma businessman David Neahr built a substantial 10- to 15-stamp mill of hand-cut local rhyolite stone on a bluff overlooking the river. He chartered the sternwheeler Cocopah to deliver about 30 tons of machinery. The mill processed ore from Mendivil’s nearby Apache claim and other properties; ore was packed by mule from the hills. Neahr expanded but later went bankrupt after embezzlement. Subsequent operators, including Dr. DeWitt C. Jayne, continued work; by the early 1880s reports noted thousands of tons of ore averaging around $21 per ton.
A larger boom came in the 1890s–early 1900s under promoter Stephen A. Dorsey and the California King Gold Mines Company. A large (reported ~450-ton capacity) stamp mill was erected, along with a narrow-gauge railroad (about 4–5 miles) from the mines near the peak to the riverside mill. Peak employment reached around 700 miners; the town’s population is commonly cited at up to 2,500 at its height, with stores, schools, saloons, and supporting industries (woodcutting for steamboat fuel, ranching, stage work). Gold production was strongest around 1904–1906.
Decline followed from depleting/lower-grade ore, mill accidents, rising costs, and especially the loss of cheap river transport after construction of Laguna Dam (completed 1909), which blocked upstream steamboat navigation. The mill was eventually moved inland; operations largely ceased around 1910. The townsite was flooded by Imperial Reservoir in the late 1930s.
Role in the Colorado River Steamship Industry
Picacho served as a regular steamboat landing from about 1862 to 1910, part of the network supporting mining, military posts (Fort Yuma and others), and settlements along the lower Colorado. Shallow-draft sternwheelers (and earlier sidewheelers) of George A. Johnson & Company and later the Colorado Steam Navigation Company (reorganized 1869) dominated the trade. They carried mining machinery, supplies, passengers, and wood (often cut by local labor in desert washes), and took out ore or concentrates for further shipment via the Gulf of California and coastal vessels to San Francisco or other ports. Barges were frequently towed for extra capacity. The landing sat in a cottonwood-and-willow grove with adobes and huts; it was a practical stop roughly midway in the lower-river run above Yuma.
Steam navigation on the Colorado began in the early 1850s primarily to supply Fort Yuma more cheaply than overland routes from San Diego or San Francisco. Regular service expanded with mining booms (La Paz, Castle Dome, Eureka, Eldorado Canyon, and Picacho itself). The Southern Pacific Railroad’s arrival at Yuma in 1877 reduced through traffic, but local and upper-river freight (including Picacho) continued until the Laguna Dam ended commercial navigation upstream of Yuma.
Ships and landings associated with Picacho include vessels of the dominant fleets that routinely called at lower- and mid-river points (Castle Dome, Eureka/Williamsport, Picacho, Norton’s Landing, Clip, Ehrenberg/La Paz, and farther north). Documented or strongly indicated connections include:
- Cocopah (Cocopah I, sternwheeler launched 1859; or the later Cocopah II of 1867): Chartered specifically to deliver mill machinery to Picacho in 1878; the class of vessel regularly served the lower river.
- Mohave / Mohave I (sternwheeler, 1864–1875) and Mohave II (1876–c. 1900): Standard workhorses on routes that explicitly included Picacho among mid-river stops.
- Other Colorado Steam Navigation Company vessels such as Colorado (various), Gila, Nina Tilden, and supporting barges that worked the same corridor of landings.
- Later/smaller craft in the declining years (e.g., light freighters operating into the early 1900s) continued intermittent service until the dam closed the route.
Picacho’s steamboat era thus tied a remote desert mining district directly into the commercial and military logistics of Arizona Territory and the broader Southwest until railroads and dams rendered river transport obsolete. The site’s remaining mill ruins and the surrounding recreation area preserve tangible evidence of this chapter of Colorado River history.
The Lost Death Valley Germans
A Family’s Vanishing and the Discovery That Closed a 13-Year Mystery
In the searing July heat of 1996, a family of four German tourists from Dresden disappeared into the remote southwestern corner of Death Valley National Park. Their fate remained unknown for more than 13 years until amateur searchers uncovered skeletal remains and personal effects that finally explained what had happened.
Egbert Rimkus, a 34-year-old architect, was traveling with his 11-year-old son Georg Weber, his girlfriend Cornelia Meyer, 27, and her 4-year-old son Max Meyer. The group arrived in the United States on July 8, 1996, flying into Seattle and then continuing to Los Angeles. There they rented a green 1996 Plymouth Voyager minivan. After time in the San Clemente area and a stay at the Treasure Island Hotel in Las Vegas, they entered Death Valley National Park on July 22.
At the Furnace Creek Visitors Center they purchased a German-language guide to the park. That night they camped in Hanaupah Canyon. The next day they visited sites including an abandoned mining camp at Warm Springs, where Cornelia signed a visitor log with the names of all four family members and noted they were “going over the pass”—likely a reference to the rugged Mengel Pass. They also stopped at the Geologist’s Cabin in Butte Valley, taking an American flag labeled “Butte Valley Stone Cabin” that was later found in their van.
The family never returned. They had booked a flight home for July 27 but did not board it. Rimkus’s ex-wife, Heike Weber, grew concerned and contacted authorities. An Interpol alert was issued.
On October 21, 1996, a park ranger on a helicopter flight searching for illegal drug labs spotted the minivan in Anvil Spring Canyon, an extremely remote area closed to vehicles. The van had three flat tires and damaged rims; tracks showed it had been driven more than two miles in that condition over rocky terrain. Inside were camping gear, a Coleman sleeping bag, tent, toys, empty water and juice containers, beer bottles, a camera with exposed film, and the American flag from the cabin. Passports, wallets, money, and airline tickets were gone, indicating the family had left on foot intending to seek help.
An extensive search involving more than 45 searchers, helicopters, and horses covered hundreds of square miles at a cost of roughly $80,000. The only significant find was a single Bud Ice beer bottle under a bush about 1.7 miles from the van, beside a cleared ledge with a seat mark suggesting someone had rested in the shade. On October 26, 1996, the official search was called off. The family was presumed dead from heat exposure and dehydration in temperatures that routinely exceeded 110–115°F (43–46°C) in July.
For 13 years the case remained open but dormant, spawning internet speculation. In 2009, Tom Mahood, a volunteer with the Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit who had become interested in the case, and his search partner Les Walker conducted independent explorations. Mahood theorized that after the van became stranded, the family walked south toward the perimeter of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake—about eight miles away—expecting a well-patrolled, fenced military boundary of the kind common in Germany. Instead they encountered open desert.
On November 12, 2009, Walker and Mahood discovered scattered skeletal remains of two adults in a remote section of Goler Wash, several miles southeast of the van site. Nearby were Cornelia Meyer’s passport, bank identification, wallet, pages from a German-language journal or planner containing business cards from places the family had visited, a wine bottle, another beer bottle matching those in the van, a toothbrush, and the sole of a small shoe that may have belonged to a woman or child. The remains and items were scattered over roughly 150 meters, appearing to radiate from the base of a small cliff.
Authorities recovered additional remains in follow-up searches. DNA testing positively identified Egbert Rimkus. Cornelia Meyer was identified through the personal effects found with the remains and the overall circumstances. Smaller bones recovered near the site were believed to belong to the two boys, but decades of extreme sun and weather had degraded them too severely for definitive DNA identification. The children have never been positively identified and remain listed as missing persons with Interpol.
Investigators and the medical examiner concluded there was no evidence of crime. The family most likely became stranded when their vehicle was disabled, then attempted to walk for help and succumbed to heat stroke, dehydration, and lack of shelter in the extreme midsummer desert conditions. Average high temperatures in the area in July approach 116.5°F (46.9°C).
The discovery by Mahood and Walker brought official closure to one of Death Valley’s most enduring modern mysteries. It stands as a stark reminder of the park’s unforgiving environment, where even prepared visitors can quickly face life-threatening conditions far from help. The adult remains were identified; the precise final resting places of the two young boys remain unknown.
Black Eagle – Colorado River Steamship
The Black Eagle was a small, experimental screw-propelled steamboat built and operated briefly in 1907 on the Green River (a major tributary of the Colorado River) near Green River, Utah.
Description
It was a modest wooden vessel designed for the shallow, variable conditions of the upper Colorado River system’s desert canyons and channels. Key specifications include:
- Length: approximately 40 feet
- Beam: 6 feet
- Draft: 7–8 inches (extremely shallow, allowing it to navigate very low water)
- Propulsion: screw (propeller) driven by a 20-horsepower compound vertical marine steam engine
- Fuel: wood or coal
- Builder/Owner/Operator: Harry T. Yokey (also referred to as H.T. Yokey), a local resident of the Green River/Elgin, Utah, area who experimented with various boats on the river starting around 1902–1903.
Contemporary recollections describe it as significantly smaller than contemporaneous vessels like the sternwheeler Cliff Dweller (about 70 feet long). It was launched in June 1907 just above the railroad bridge at Green River, Utah. One local account notes a man firing the boiler while the boat crossed the river on an upstream angle for roughly half a mile, with the vessel otherwise tied up along the shore.
Its shallow draft and relatively light construction suited exploratory or recreational use on a river known for sandbars, riffles, fluctuating flows, and difficult channels rather than sustained commercial traffic.
History of Usage
Harry T. Yokey, who lived in the Green River area from about 1903 and later retired there, built and ran multiple power boats on the Green River primarily for personal experimentation, testing navigability, and hunting trips rather than commercial freight or passenger service. He had earlier experience with rowboats (including a 1903 hunting trip down toward the cataracts) and other power craft, including involvement with vessels later associated with the Cliff Dweller/City of Moab lineage.
The Black Eagle was his largest boat. In 1907 it made one documented downstream trip of roughly 100 miles. During or after this run the boiler tubes blew out (the vessel is recorded as having “exploded” in 1907 in standard lists of Colorado River system steamboats). The engine and boiler were salvaged, and the hull was abandoned.
Yokey’s overall efforts, including the short career of the Black Eagle, underscored the practical difficulties of power navigation on this stretch of the Green River (between Green River, Utah, and Moab). Channels were hard to follow, sandbars and low water were persistent obstacles, and the river proved unsuitable for reliable commercial steamboat service in that era. By the time of later testimony, no power boats remained operating from Green River, Utah.
The Black Eagle belongs to the short-lived and largely unsuccessful chapter of steamboat attempts on the Green and upper Colorado Rivers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (alongside vessels such as the Major Powell, Undine, Cliff Dweller, Comet, and Charles H. Spencer). These efforts contrasted with the more extensive commercial paddlewheel operations on the lower Colorado River from the 1850s into the early 1900s. Primary documentation comes from contemporary lists of Colorado River steamboats and from testimony and recollections preserved in Utah historical collections related to river navigation and water rights cases.
In summary, the Black Eagle was a brief, small-scale experimental craft that illustrated both the ingenuity of local river runners and the severe limitations of steam navigation on the upper Colorado system’s tributaries.