The Charles H. Spencer was a sternwheel steamboat built in 1911–1912 for a short-lived gold-mining venture on the upper Colorado River near Lee’s Ferry, Arizona. It was the last steamboat constructed and operated for bulk transport on the Colorado, marking the end of nearly 50 years of commercial steamboating on the river.
Background and Construction
Charles Harvey Spencer (1872–1968), a prospector and mining promoter, arrived at Lee’s Ferry in 1910 seeking gold in the Chinle Formation shale. As managing director of the American Placer Corporation, he planned hydraulic mining and mercury amalgamation processing, which required coal to power boilers and equipment. A coal seam was located upriver in a side canyon of Warm Creek (roughly 40 miles by pack trail from Lee’s Ferry).
Spencer’s investors preferred a boat over mule trains for hauling coal. He commissioned the San Francisco firm of Schultze, Robertson, and Schultze (or Robertson–Schultz Co.; builders including James Robertson and Herman Rosenfelt) to design and build a shallow-draft sternwheeler suited for river work. Parts were manufactured in San Francisco, shipped by rail to Marysvale, Utah, then hauled by ox-cart to the mouth of Warm Creek, where the vessel was reassembled from a “knocked-down” hull and launched in February 1912. It was named for Spencer.
Specifications
Sources vary slightly on exact dimensions (plans vs. contemporary accounts and overall length including the wheel), but the vessel was a wooden-hulled, flat-bottomed sternwheeler with a hard chine, square stern, twin rudders, and hogging trusses for structural reinforcement under cargo loads:
- Length: Hull about 70 feet (stem to sternpost); overall length commonly given as 85 feet 6 inches to 92.5 feet (including the 12-foot stern paddle wheel and guards).
- Beam: 20–25 feet.
- Draft: Shallow, 18–20 inches (designed for low water and sandbars).
- Depth of hold: About 4 feet.
- Power: ~100–110 hp marine boiler driving a 12-foot stern paddle wheel.
- Capacity: Rated around 50–100 tons; in practice it averaged 5–6 tons of coal per trip.
- Construction: Single-framed wooden hull, largely unpainted.
It was designed more for conditions like the Sacramento River than the sediment-laden, fluctuating Colorado with its shifting bars and currents.
Role on the Colorado River
The boat’s sole purpose was to haul coal from the Warm Creek mine downstream to the placer works at Lee’s Ferry to fuel the gold-extraction process. It made only a few runs in spring/summer 1912. Navigation proved difficult due to variable water levels, sandbars, and the need to work against the current. Crews had to learn the river’s quirks, and the vessel grounded at times. A frequently cited practical problem was that it burned a large portion (or nearly all) of the coal it could carry on a round trip, leaving little net delivery.
The mining operation itself failed quickly: the Chinle shale contained gold, but an unknown substance (later identified as the rare-earth element rhenium) clogged the amalgamators, so gold was lost in the tailings. By the end of summer 1912 the venture collapsed for lack of viable recovery and capital. The steamboat was tied up (docked/abandoned) just below Lee’s Ferry—about ¼ mile east of the ferry area—and never used again. It was the last vessel built for bulk cargo transport on the Colorado system.
Ultimate Fate
Abandoned after its brief service (accounts place final docking in 1912, with some sources noting abandonment formalized around 1914), the vessel sat at the bank. Driftwood accumulated, and high water later shifted it. It sank in shallow water—commonly dated to a 1921 flood (or between roughly 1915 and the late 1920s)—after sliding sideways and striking a boulder that punctured the hull. The superstructure was later stripped for lumber.
Today the remains (portions of the wooden hull and the marine boiler) lie in shallow water near the bank at Lee’s Ferry in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Arizona (visible at low water or from the nearby historic trail/Spencer Trail area). A historical marker notes the site. The wreck is one of the few archaeologically documented Colorado River steamboat remains and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (as part of the Lee’s Ferry Historic District / related nomination, added 1989). It is a tangible remnant of early-20th-century placer mining attempts and the close of the steamboat era on the river.
In short, the Charles H. Spencer was an ambitious but ill-adapted tool for a failed gold scheme—technically a capable shallow-draft sternwheeler that simply arrived too late, on the wrong stretch of river, for a mining process that could not succeed commercially.