Lees Ferry

A crossing

The one easy way to the river for hundreds of miles

Lees Ferry is the only place in more than 260 miles where the Colorado is not hemmed in by sheer canyon walls. That made it the crossing between Utah and Arizona. Boat service ran here for over 55 years, until a bridge replaced it.

260+miles of river with no other easy crossing

1873

The ferry began in 1873, with a boat called the Colorado

John D. Lee came to the crossing in 1870 and made a small settlement called Lonely Dell. The ferry was formally established in January 1873, with the launch of a boat named the Colorado. On the south side, passengers had to climb a dangerous incline nicknamed Lee's Backbone.

Gold

A steamboat and a failed gold mine in 1910

Gold strikes in southern Utah drew prospectors to the area. In 1910 Charles H. Spencer brought tons of equipment and a 92-foot steamboat, said to be the largest vessel ever to float the Colorado above the Grand Canyon, to mine gold at Lees Ferry. The operation failed and he left, broke, in 1912. The steamboat sank in 1921, and its pieces lie along the river.

The line

The river has been measured here since 1921 to share its water

Since August 1921 a stream gage here has measured the river, and it has built up one of the most extensive streamflow records ever made in the United States. The Colorado River Compact of 1922 divided the Colorado River basin into an Upper and a Lower Basin along an imaginary line at Lees Ferry.

The ferryman

Its founder had come to the river to hide from the law

John D. Lee came to this remote crossing to take refuge from the law. In 1857 he had taken part in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which a group of Mormons and Native Americans attacked a passing wagon train from Arkansas and killed about 120 people. He was arrested, found guilty, and executed by firing squad on March 28, 1877. He was the only participant tried and executed.