The Black Eagle was a small, experimental screw-propelled steamboat built and operated briefly in 1907 on the Green River (a major tributary of the Colorado River) near Green River, Utah.
Description
It was a modest wooden vessel designed for the shallow, variable conditions of the upper Colorado River system’s desert canyons and channels. Key specifications include:
- Length: approximately 40 feet
- Beam: 6 feet
- Draft: 7–8 inches (extremely shallow, allowing it to navigate very low water)
- Propulsion: screw (propeller) driven by a 20-horsepower compound vertical marine steam engine
- Fuel: wood or coal
- Builder/Owner/Operator: Harry T. Yokey (also referred to as H.T. Yokey), a local resident of the Green River/Elgin, Utah, area who experimented with various boats on the river starting around 1902–1903.
Contemporary recollections describe it as significantly smaller than contemporaneous vessels like the sternwheeler Cliff Dweller (about 70 feet long). It was launched in June 1907 just above the railroad bridge at Green River, Utah. One local account notes a man firing the boiler while the boat crossed the river on an upstream angle for roughly half a mile, with the vessel otherwise tied up along the shore.
Its shallow draft and relatively light construction suited exploratory or recreational use on a river known for sandbars, riffles, fluctuating flows, and difficult channels rather than sustained commercial traffic.
History of Usage
Harry T. Yokey, who lived in the Green River area from about 1903 and later retired there, built and ran multiple power boats on the Green River primarily for personal experimentation, testing navigability, and hunting trips rather than commercial freight or passenger service. He had earlier experience with rowboats (including a 1903 hunting trip down toward the cataracts) and other power craft, including involvement with vessels later associated with the Cliff Dweller/City of Moab lineage.
The Black Eagle was his largest boat. In 1907 it made one documented downstream trip of roughly 100 miles. During or after this run the boiler tubes blew out (the vessel is recorded as having “exploded” in 1907 in standard lists of Colorado River system steamboats). The engine and boiler were salvaged, and the hull was abandoned.
Yokey’s overall efforts, including the short career of the Black Eagle, underscored the practical difficulties of power navigation on this stretch of the Green River (between Green River, Utah, and Moab). Channels were hard to follow, sandbars and low water were persistent obstacles, and the river proved unsuitable for reliable commercial steamboat service in that era. By the time of later testimony, no power boats remained operating from Green River, Utah.
The Black Eagle belongs to the short-lived and largely unsuccessful chapter of steamboat attempts on the Green and upper Colorado Rivers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (alongside vessels such as the Major Powell, Undine, Cliff Dweller, Comet, and Charles H. Spencer). These efforts contrasted with the more extensive commercial paddlewheel operations on the lower Colorado River from the 1850s into the early 1900s. Primary documentation comes from contemporary lists of Colorado River steamboats and from testimony and recollections preserved in Utah historical collections related to river navigation and water rights cases.
In summary, the Black Eagle was a brief, small-scale experimental craft that illustrated both the ingenuity of local river runners and the severe limitations of steam navigation on the upper Colorado system’s tributaries.