Aubrey Landing (also known as Aubrey City or Aubrey) was a short-lived 19th-century ghost town and steamboat landing at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Bill Williams River (historically Bill Williams Fork) in southern Mohave County, Arizona. Located on the east bank of the Colorado and the north bank of the Bill Williams River, it served as a supply and shipping point for nearby mines in the Bill Williams Mining District during the Arizona Territory’s mining boom. Founded before 1865 and largely abandoned after the post office closed in 1886, the site now lies submerged beneath Lake Havasu, formed by Parker Dam in 1938.
Its history is inseparable from Colorado River steamboat navigation, which provided the primary economical link for freight, ore, supplies, and passengers between the Gulf of California/Yuma area and interior mining districts before railroads reached the region.
Early Exploration and Naming
The site was visited by early American explorers. Captain Amiel Weeks Whipple’s 1854 Pacific Railroad Survey near the 35th Parallel passed the location. In 1858, First Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives’s expedition to explore the Colorado River of the West camped there (Camp #33) while operating the steamboat Explorer.
The settlement was named for François Xavier Aubry (often spelled Aubrey; 1824–1854), a French-Canadian freighter and explorer known as the “Skimmer of the Plains” for his record-setting speed on the Santa Fe Trail. In 1853, while returning eastward from California after driving sheep overland, Aubry’s party reached and forded the Colorado River in the vicinity (accounts place the crossing near or roughly 20 miles north of the Bill Williams River mouth). He constructed rafts and contended with hostile Indigenous groups before continuing to New Mexico. Aubry died in 1854 in Albuquerque from wounds sustained in a fight. The landing’s founders, whose identities are unknown, commemorated him when establishing the river settlement during the Civil War era in the newly organized Arizona Territory (1863).
Founding, Mining Boom, and Settlement
Aubrey Landing emerged around the early-to-mid 1860s (sources cite circa 1860–1865) as a river port to support copper mining in the Bill Williams Mining District. It was ideally positioned roughly 220 miles upriver from Yuma. Key nearby operations included the Planet Company copper mines (about 12.5 miles away, discovered in 1863 by Richard Ryland and yielding high-grade ore of 15–40% copper or higher), Mineral Hill mines (about 11.2 miles), and Empire Flat mines (about 9.6 miles). Later, silver discoveries such as Jackson McCrackin’s lode (1873) also used the landing.
At its mid-1860s peak, the settlement reportedly included around 50 cabins and stores. It featured typical mining-camp structures plus a hotel, saloon, general store, and an office of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company (housed in an old ship’s cabin). Ore from the Planet Mine was shipped on nearly every downriver steamer beginning in 1864; high-grade copper was sent for smelting in San Francisco or, in some cases, Swansea, Wales. Freight teams hauled supplies inland to the mines and camps up Bill Williams Fork.
A post office opened on October 2, 1866 (named Aubrey), reflecting residual activity after an initial setback, and closed on November 3, 1886. By 1878 the town had not grown as its promoters hoped and consisted of only a handful of structures.
Role of Colorado River Steamships
Steamboat service was the economic lifeline of Aubrey Landing and the broader lower Colorado River region from the early 1850s until the early 20th century (effectively ending with the completion of Laguna Dam in 1909). George A. Johnson & Company’s operations evolved into the dominant Colorado Steam Navigation Company (CSNC) by the late 1860s. These shallow-draft sternwheelers and sidewheelers, often towing barges, navigated seasonal high water (typically strongest in spring and into summer) despite sandbars, shifting channels, and occasional rapids.
Aubrey Landing functioned as a regular stop for vessels such as the Esmeralda, Cocopah, Mohave, Gila, and others. They delivered mining equipment, provisions, explosives, merchandise, and passengers bound for the mines or further upriver points (including toward Fort Mohave and Hardyville). Outbound cargo centered on copper ore (and later silver), along with hides, pelts, and other goods. Steamboat freight rates were dramatically lower than overland wagon costs—initially on the order of $75 per ton or less depending on the route and period—making remote high-grade deposits viable. Peak monthly freight capacities on the river reached hundreds of tons during favorable seasons. An 1870s traveler’s account describes the landing in decline: only four or five cabins remained, the largest serving as a combined post office, store, saloon, and hotel, with activity limited mainly to freight teams serving the inland mines.
The landing formed part of a chain of river ports (including Ehrenberg, Parker’s Landing/Empire Flat, Liverpool Landing, and others) that linked ocean steamers at the Gulf of California or Port Isabel with Arizona’s interior mining districts.
Decline and Abandonment
A sharp drop in copper prices in 1865 nearly depopulated the town. Residual mining and river traffic sustained a small population for roughly another two decades. The arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad at Yuma in 1877, followed by further rail expansion, undercut the steamboat monopoly on long-haul freight. Declining ore production, market fluctuations, floods that altered the river channel, and the general shift away from isolated river-dependent camps sealed the site’s fate. After the post office closed in 1886, the settlement was abandoned; by the early 20th century it had faded into a minor or uninhabited river point.
Legacy
Today the townsite lies beneath the waters of Lake Havasu (average depths in the vicinity have been reported around 45 feet in some accounts), north of Parker Dam. No surface remains are accessible. Aubrey Landing exemplifies the transient frontier river ports of the American Southwest: boom-and-bust communities dependent on steamboat logistics and mineral prices, quickly eclipsed by railroads and larger-scale industrial mining. Its story is preserved primarily in expedition reports, steamboat histories (notably works drawing on contemporary accounts), mining records of the Planet and related districts, and geographic surveys. The site underscores how the Colorado River served as a vital—if challenging—highway for the opening of Arizona Territory before modern transportation infrastructure transformed the region.
Primary sources and further reading include the Wikipedia entry synthesizing historical records; Richard E. Lingenfelter’s Steamboats on the Colorado River, 1852–1916; accounts of the Ives and Whipple expeditions; and contemporary descriptions of the Planet Mine and Bill Williams District mining activity.