Mormon Island (Colorado River)

Mormon Island, an island in the Colorado River near Hardyville, in Mohave County, Arizona in 1879, since removed by the action of the river.[1] :78

History

Mormon Island was used to assemble and launch the Southwestern Mining Company's schooner Sou'Wester, in 1879. Because the steamers could not reach the Virgin River during the low water months, and barges had been sailed up the river from Hardyville from the 1860s in the low water season, the mining company, had the Sou'Wester built in San Francisco, knocked down and shipped by rail to Yuma, Arizona, then shipped up river on the steamboat Gila to Hardyville where carpenters were waiting to reassemble it.[1]:78[2] The schooner was subsequently used to sail salt from the mines in the Virgin River valley down river from Rioville through the Boulder and Black Canyons to be used in the Southwestern Mining Company's silver ore reduction furnaces at Eldorado Canyon. It occasionally sailed down river as far as Hardyville to pick up freight.[3] It was wrecked in the Short and Dirty Rapids in the upper river in 1882.[4]:3,6

References

  1. 1 2 Richard E. Lingenfelter, Steamboats on the Colorado River, 1852-1916, University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1978
  2. ↑ October 18, 1879, The Arizona Sentinel; Yuma, Arizona, Page 2, col. 1
  3. ↑ January 14, 1882, The Arizona Sentinel; Yuma, Arizona, p.3 col.3
  4. ↑ U.S. Congress, House, House Document 67 "Preliminary Examination of the Colorado River, Nevada" 56th Cong., 2d sess., Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1900.

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