vacation tours pegleg or peralta? - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

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OR a distance of 500
miles, from Moab,
Utah, to Hoover Dam,
there is only one readily
accessible water level
crossing on the Colorado
River. It was to this spot that the
pioneer explorer John D. Lee fled to escape
punishment for his part in the
Mountain Meadow Massacre in 1857 in
which 137 immigrants were massacred
by a party of Indians and whites under
the leadership of Lee.
Excommunicated by the Mormon
Church, hunted by the United States
Army, Lee, with one of his wives, eventually
sought sanctuary in an isolated
canyon in the depths of the Indian country.
Here he was to perform his last significant
service for his Church and for
his fellowmen prior to his capture, trial
and execution for murder.
It was in the year of the Declaration
of Independence, however, that the first
party of white men to visit this area
passed through on their return from an
unsuccessful attempt to find a short route
from Santa Fe to California. Unable to
ford the river because of high water, the
Spanish Padres, Escalante and Dominguez,
climbed the formidable walls of
the canyon and continued up the west
bank of the river to the difficult but not
impossible "Crossing of the Fathers,"
which is now at the bottom of Lake
Powell.
Almost 100 years later, the Mormon
missionary to the Hopis, Jacob Hamblin,
12 / Desert Magazine / July, 1968
EXCOMMUNICATED BY HIS CHURCH,
HUNTED BY THE UNITED STATES ARMY AND DESTITUTE,
JOHN DOYLE LEE WAS EVENTUALLY CAPTURED AND HUNG,
BUT NOT BEFORE HE HELPED COLONIZE
ARIZONA BY BUILDING AND OPERATING . . .
LEE'S FERRY
used the same crossing on his first six
expeditions to the Indian country. In
1869, on his seventh trip, he rediscovered
the much more accessible route Escalante
had originally found but had
been unable to use. In that same year,
John Wesley Powell, heading a U. S.
Geological Survey team, made his first
voyage through the canyons, stopping at
the wide flats at the mouth of the Paria
River which later were to be the site of
Lee's ranch and ferry.
Major Powell repeated his canyon trip
in 1871, again utilizing the same wide
by Arnold Tilden
flats as a rest stop and supply depot.
Here he abandoned one of his boats, the
Nellie Powell, as unsafe. This boat, later
salvaged by Lee, became the first commercial
ferry, replacing the log raft originally
used by Hamblin on his trip to the
Hopis.
Lee, accompanied by his wife Emma,
reached the area about Christmas time,
1871. Although excommunicated by the
Church, he was nevertheless under its
orders to build and operate a ferry at
this out-of-the-way spot, a ferry (that was
essential to the direct route from Utah
The muddy water of the Paria River, foreground, is contrasted with the blue
water of the Colorado for several miles below the entrance before they merge.