La Paz was a short-lived early gold mining town along on the western boarder of current-day La Paz County, Arizona. The town grew quickly after gold was discovered nearby in 1862. La Paz, Spanish for peace, was chosen as the name in recognition of the feast day for Our Lady of Peace. Originally located in the New Mexico Territory, the town became part of the Arizona Territory when President Abraham Lincoln established the new territory in 1863. In 1983 the newly-formed County of La Paz adopted the name, long after the town had become a ghost town.
The Bill Williams River is a 46.3-mile-long (74.5 km) river in west-central Arizona where it, along with its tributary, the Santa Maria River, form the boundary between Mohave County to the north and La Paz County to the south. It is a major drainage westwards into the Colorado River of the Lower Colorado River Valley south of Hoover Dam and Lake Mead, and the drainage basin covers portions of northwest, and west-central Arizona. The equivalent drainage system paralleling the east–west lower reaches of the Bill Williams is the Gila River, which flows east-to-west across central Arizona, joining the Colorado River in the southwest at Yuma. The confluence of the Bill Williams River with the Colorado is north of Parker, and south of Lake Havasu City.
Castle Dome Landing, Arizona is a ghost town in the Castle Dome Mountains of Yuma County in the U.S. state of Arizona. It was first settled as a transport depot and mining camp around 1863 in what was then the Arizona Territory.
Aubrey Landing, Aubrey City or Aubrey is a ghost town at the mouth of the Bill Williams River in southern Mohave County, Arizona. The town was founded before 1865 and was abandoned sometime after 1886. Aubrey Landing was inundated when Lake Havasu was formed.
El Dorado Canyon is a canyon in southern Clark County, Nevada famed for its rich silver and gold mines. The canyon was named in 1857 by steamboat entrepreneur Captain George Alonzo Johnson when gold and silver was discovered here. It drains into the Colorado River at the former site of Nelson's Landing.
Steamboats on the Colorado River operated from the river mouth at the Colorado River Delta on the Gulf of California in Mexico, up to the Virgin River on the Lower Colorado River Valley in the Southwestern United States from 1852 until 1909, when the construction of the Laguna Dam was completed. The shallow draft paddle steamers were found to be the most economical way to ship goods between the Pacific Ocean ports and settlements and mines along the lower river, putting in at landings in Sonora state, Baja California Territory, California state, Arizona Territory, New Mexico Territory, and Nevada state. They remained the primary means of transportation of freight until the advent of the more economical railroads began cutting away at their business from 1878 when the first line entered Arizona Territory.
La Laguna was a gold mining town in New Mexico Territory, now Yuma County, Arizona. It was in existence for a short time from 1860 to 1862. The town was a steamboat landing 20 miles above Yuma, Arizona on the Colorado River. It had a few merchants and a ferry across the Colorado River that served placer miners in the vicinity. When the La Paz gold rush began, La Laguna began to decline and it was soon replaced by Castle Dome Landing, 15 miles to the north, following the discovery of gold in the Castle Dome Mountains. It remained for a time as the site of a store and a ranch, belonging to Jose Redondo, one of the first to mine gold at La Paz.
El Dorado City, which is now a ghost town, was a mining camp in the Colorado Mining District at the mouth of January Wash at its confluence with El Dorado Canyon. It was located about a mile down the canyon from Huse Spring, at an elevation of 2382 feet. Its site was located nearby to the south southeast of the Techatticup Mine the primary source of the ore its mill processed.
Colorado City is now a ghost town, in Clark County, Nevada, located under Lake Mohave at the mouth of El Dorado Canyon.
Mineral City, a short-lived town, steamboat landing and ferry crossing on the Colorado River in La Paz County, Arizona from 1863 to 1866. It was located on the east bank of the Colorado River, 1 mile below its rival Olive City and 1/2 mile below the original site of Ehrenberg, Arizona and 1 1/2 miles above its current site.
Eureka or Eureka Landing, is a former mining town and steamboat landing, now a ghost town, on the Arizona bank of the Colorado River in what is now La Paz County, Arizona. It was originally located in Yuma County, Arizona from 1863 through the 1870s.
Williamsport is a former mining town and present day ghost town, on the bank of the Colorado River in La Paz County, Arizona.
Bradshaw's Ferry was a ferry at the crossing point on the Colorado River, of the Bradshaw Trail at Olive City and later at Mineral City and Ehrenburg, between what was then San Diego County, California and Arizona County, New Mexico Territory. The ferry connected the Bradshaw Trail to the road to the gold placers of La Paz, the first big strike of the Colorado River Gold Rush. From 1863, the La Paz - Wikenburg Road connected the Bradshaw Trail to the new mining boom town settlements in the interior of Arizona Territory.
Philadelphia Silver and Copper Mining Company, a 19th-century mining corporation chartered in Pennsylvania, April 8, 1864.
Olive City, or Olivia, was a short-lived town, steamboat landing, and ferry crossing on the Colorado River in what was then Yuma County, Arizona Territory, from 1863 to 1866. It was located on the Arizona bank of the Colorado River, 1 mile above its rival Mineral City and 1/2 mile above the original site of Ehrenberg, Arizona, 3 miles southwest of the location of La Paz. The GNIS location of Olive City (historical) is indicated as being in La Paz County, Arizona, but its coordinates in the present-day now put it across the river just within Riverside County, California Olive City was named after Olive Oatman who had been, with her sister, survivors of the massacre of her family and a captive of the Yavapai until purchased from them by the Mohave who they lived with for several years.
Colorado Mining District was primarily a silver and gold mining district organized in El Dorado Canyon, New Mexico Territory on the west shore of the Colorado River in what is now Clark County, Nevada. The Colorado District was part of Arizona Territory from 1863 to 1869. In 1869, the land of Arizona Territory north and west of the Colorado River east to the 114th meridian of longitude, including the Colorado District, was turned over to Nevada.
George A. Johnson & Company was a partnership between three men who pioneered navigation on the Colorado River. Benjamin M. Hartshorne, George Alonzo Johnson and Alfred H. Wilcox. The George A. Johnson & Company was formed in the fall of 1852, and was reorganized as the Colorado Steam Navigation Company in 1869.
Clip, or Clip Landing, was a steamboat landing and mill settlement in Yuma County, Arizona Territory. The site in the present day is a ghost town, on the east bank of the Colorado River in La Paz County, Arizona. The settlement was located 70 miles up river from Yuma. It lies at an elevation of 223 feet, just south of Clip Wash, and the road to the Clip Mine at the top of the wash, 8 miles southeast of the mill.
Norton's Landing or Norton's, was a steamboat landing on the Colorado River, in what was then Yuma County, Arizona Territory. Today it is in La Paz County, Arizona. Nortons Landing is 52 miles upriver from Yuma, Arizona 4 miles above Picacho, California and 18 miles below the Clip, Arizona landing. It lays on a rocky point of land next to the river at 215 feet of elevation just east of Red Cloud Wash and Black Rock Wash, where roads to the district mines in the mountains, met the Colorado River.
La Paz–Wikenburg Road was a 131-mile-long (211 km) wagon road from 1863 and from 1866 a stagecoach route between the Colorado River landings at La Paz, Olive City and Mineral City to the mining town of Wickenburg, Arizona. From Wickenburg roads led to other new mining camps and districts in the interior of Arizona Territory. From 1862, when the river changed its course, La Paz was isolated on the slough of the old river channel over four miles (6.4 km) from the new river channel. In 1866, the road head changed to the new river landing of Ehrenburg, where the Bradshaw Trail wagon and stagecoach road from San Bernardino, California, crossed the Colorado River at Bradshaw's Ferry.
