The Quechan, or Yuma, are a Native American tribe who live on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation on the lower Colorado River in Arizona and California just north of the Mexican border. Despite their name, they are not related to the Quechua people of the Andes. Members are enrolled into the Quechan Tribe of the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation. The federally recognized Quechan tribe's main office is located in Winterhaven, California. Its operations and the majority of its reservation land are located in California, United States.
Indigenous peoples of Arizona are the Native American people of the state of Arizona. These include people that have lived in the region since time immemorial, tribes who entered the region centuries ago, such as the Southern Athabascan peoples, and the Pascua Yaqui, who settled Arizona in the early 20th century.
Samuel Washington Woodhouse was an American surgeon, explorer and naturalist.
Fort Yuma was a fort in California located in Imperial County, across the Colorado River from Yuma, Arizona. It was on the Butterfield Overland Mail route from 1858 until 1861 and was abandoned May 16, 1883, and transferred to the Department of the Interior. The Fort Yuma Indian School and the Saint Thomas Yuma Indian Mission now occupy the site. It is one of the "associated sites" listed as Yuma Crossing and Associated Sites on the National Register of Historic Places in the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area. In addition, it is registered as California Historical Landmark #806.
Aubrey Landing, Aubrey City or Aubrey is a ghost town at the mouth of the Bill Williams River in southern Mohave County, Arizona, United States. The town was founded before 1865 and was abandoned sometime after 1886. Aubrey Landing was inundated when Lake Havasu was formed.
Port Isabel was a seaport established on Port Isabel Slough in 1865 during the American Civil War in Sonora, Mexico in the mouth of the Colorado River on the Gulf of California. It was founded to support the increased river traffic caused by the gold rush that began in 1862 on the Colorado River and the Yuma Quartermaster Depot newly established in 1864 to support the Army posts in the Arizona Military District. The slough was discovered in 1865 by the Captain W. H. Pierson of the schooner Isabel, that first used the slough to transfer its cargo to steamboats safe from the tidal bore of the Colorado River. Shortly afterward Port Isabel was established 3 miles up the slough and replaced Robinson's Landing as the place where cargo was unloaded in the river from seagoing craft on to flat bottomed steamboats of the Colorado River and carried up to Fort Yuma and points further north on the river.
Joseph Christmas Ives was an American soldier, botanist, and an explorer of the Colorado River in 1858.
The Yuma War was the name given to a series of United States military operations conducted in southern California and what is today southwestern Arizona from 1850 to 1853. The Quechan were the primary opponent of the United States Army, though engagements were fought between the Americans and other native groups in the region.
The Mohave War was an armed conflict between the Mohave people and the United States from 1858 to 1859. With the California Gold Rush of 1849, thousands of American settlers headed west through Mohave country and into California. The influx of migrants passing through, combined with simple misunderstandings, led to conflict. Fort Mohave on the Arizona side of the Colorado River was built for operations against the Mohave and was the second American military post established on the river after Fort Yuma. Eventually advantages in weaponry and tactics brought the Mohave and their allies to surrender. After the signing of a peace treaty in 1859, the Mohave no longer opposed the United States through warfare. The peace also ended a long guerrilla war between the Mohave and the Maricopa of south central Arizona.
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.
Colorado, was a stern-wheel paddle-steamer, the third steamboat on the Colorado River, and first stern-wheel steamboat put on that river, in December 1855.
General Jesup was a side-wheel paddle-steamer, named for General Thomas Jesup then Quartermaster General of the United States Army, and was the second steamboat launched on the Colorado River, in 1854.
Irataba was a leader of the Mohave Nation, known as a mediator between the Mohave and the United States. He was born near the Colorado River in present-day Arizona. Irataba was a renowned orator and one of the first Mohave to speak English, a skill he used to develop relations with the United States.
The Rose–Baley Party was the first European American emigrant wagon train to traverse the 35th parallel route known as Beale's Wagon Road, established by Edward Fitzgerald Beale, from Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico to the Colorado River near present-day Needles, California.
Drift Desert is a former ranch and steamboat landing on the Colorado River, now a ghost town, in La Paz County, Arizona.
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.
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.
Beale's Crossing was a river crossing on the Colorado River, near the head of the Mohave Valley, between New Mexico Territory and California along the 35th Parallel route of Beale's Wagon Road. It was at what became the site of Fort Mohave in what is now Fort Mohave, Arizona, west of Beaver Lake, Nevada. It was named for Edward Fitzgerald Beale, who lead the expedition that built what came to be called Beale's Wagon Road from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Beale's Crossing in California, then by way of the Mohave Trail/Old Spanish Trail, and another old route west from the Mojave River to Fort Tejon, California.
Sitgreaves Pass is a gap at an elevation of 3,586 feet / 1,093 meters, in the Black Mountains of Mohave County, Arizona. When Edward Fitzgerald Beale built Beale's Wagon Road over this pass, he named it John Howells Pass for one of the men in his expedition in October, 1857. Subsequently, the pass was named for Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves, of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, who led the 1851 Expedition Down the Zuni and Colorado Rivers. Sitgreaves' expedition never crossed the Black Mountains by this pass, but did farther north, at Secret Pass or at Union Pass. Under the mistaken impression Sitgreaves and his expedition had crossed this pass, the name was given to it by Lieutenant Joseph Christmas Ives of the Corps of Topographical Engineers in March 1858, as he passed eastward to survey the Colorado Plateau on his way to Fort Defiance, following his exploration of the Colorado River.
Lorenzo I. Sitgreaves was a U.S. Army officer from Pennsylvania who led the 1851 Sitgreaves Expedition down the Zuñi and Colorado rivers.
