Norton’s Landing (also Norton’s or Nortons Landing) was a short-lived steamboat landing and mining settlement on the Colorado River in what was then Yuma County, Arizona Territory (now La Paz County, Arizona). It sat on a rocky point of land at about 213–215 feet elevation, roughly 52 miles upriver from Yuma, 4 miles above Picacho (California), and 18 miles below Clip, Arizona. Roads from the nearby mines in the Trigo Mountains met the river there, just east of Red Cloud Wash and Black Rock Wash.
Founding and Development
The landing developed to support the Red Cloud Mine and other claims in the Silver Mining District of the Trigo Mountains. Prospecting in the area dated to the mid-1860s under Jacob Snively, but activity largely lapsed after his death in 1871. The district revived in 1879 when George Sills, Neils Johnson, George W. Norton, and Gus Crawford relocated many abandoned silver claims.
The settlement and landing took their name from George W. Norton, a civil engineer who had supervised construction of the first railroad bridge across the Colorado River at Yuma in 1877. Norton owned the Red Cloud Mine and established a smelter (ore reduction works) at the landing itself. By about 1881 the Red Cloud Mining Company had a successful reduction works there processing copper, silver, and gold ores from the district. A general store operated at the site.
A post office named Norton’s opened on June 4, 1883, and operated until August 24, 1888 (mail then went to Yuma). It reopened September 3, 1891, and closed for good on March 13, 1894. The community persisted a bit longer; the Arizona Sentinel (Yuma) reported on April 17, 1897, that the once-well-known silver-district town was completely deserted because of low silver prices and mine closures. Residents moved to the then-flourishing camp at Picacho. One secondary account notes it was briefly known as Pacific City.
Role in the Colorado River Steamship Industry
Norton’s Landing functioned as a steamboat stop primarily in the 1880s–early 1890s (sources commonly list active years as roughly 1882–1894). It served as a transshipment point for supplies, machinery, provisions, and coal bound for the Silver District mines, and for outbound ore or concentrates. Steamboats of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company (and later operators under Southern Pacific influence after the railroad reached Yuma in 1877) called here while navigating the lower Colorado’s shallow, shifting channels, sandbars, and seasonal low water.
The landing formed part of a chain of river ports that included Castle Dome Landing, Picacho, Clip, Ehrenberg/La Paz, Hardyville, and others, stretching from the Gulf of California upstream toward the mining districts of Arizona, California, and Nevada. Freight rates and reliability on the river remained important for remote mines even after the railroad arrived at Yuma, though overall steamboat traffic declined as rail connections expanded. One historical assessment notes that the Silver District mines (including those served by Norton’s and Clip) had their own mills and therefore generated relatively limited steamboat business compared with earlier boom periods, but the landing still operated as a recognized stop.
Ships associated with service to the landing include vessels of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company fleet active in the relevant decades. Contemporary and later accounts specifically link the sternwheelers Gila (launched in the 1870s, a major workhorse on the lower river into the 1890s) and Mohave / Mohave II (the latter a larger 149-foot vessel of the mid-1870s) to service of Norton’s Landing and the surrounding district. These boats typically pushed or towed barges to increase capacity and operated when water levels permitted. Other CSNC steamers of the era (such as later vessels like Cochan) worked the same general route between Yuma and upriver points, though primary documentation of individual calls at Norton’s is sparse.
Steam navigation on the lower Colorado effectively ended after the Laguna Dam was completed in 1909, blocking the river; residual commercial traffic ceased around 1916.
Decline and Present Site
Falling silver prices in the 1880s–1890s, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893, competition from railroads, and high overland freight costs after river transport became less competitive caused the mines and the landing to close. By 1897 the town was empty. Today Norton’s Landing is a ghost town in La Paz County. Only scattered foundations, mining debris, and slag from the reduction works remain.
Norton’s Landing exemplifies the brief, specialized river ports that supported Arizona Territory’s mining economy in the final decades of Colorado River steamboating—linking remote desert claims to the wider commercial network until railroads and market forces rendered them obsolete.