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American Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project
Internet Presentation
Version
121408-02
By:
Kathy Block
Fort at Lees Ferry Crossing
Lees Ferry site on the Colorado River on the Arizona Strip
has an interesting history and a pioneer cemetery at nearby Lonely Dell
Ranch. We visited this site most recently in August 2001 when we took the
photos accompanying this article.
Located just north of Marble Canyon, Lees Ferry was the site
of the last crossing option on the Colorado River before it plunged into its
227 mile ravine. Sitting below red rock cliffs, it is now a thumb of Glen
Canyon National Recreation area and the favored put-in spot for river runners.
The site of Lees Ferry has a long history dating
back to March 1864 when Mormon frontiersmen and Indian missionary Jacob Hamblin
and his 15 men built a raft at the mouth of the Paria River and
crossed the Colorado downstream at point that would become Lees Ferry.
They posted guards at the Ute Ford/Crossing of
the Fathers and at "Pahreah Crossing" (Lee's Ferry) in winter of
1869-1870. From 1876 to 1890 the ferry was very busy.
Mormon couples traveled from Arizona settlements
to have their marriages solemnized in new temple in St. George, Utah and road
earned title "The Honeymoon Trail."
Ferry fees for Mormon travelers were $2.00 per
wagon, $1.00 per horse and rider, and .25 per head of stock. Non-Mormons
paid about 50 percent more.
In 1871 John Doyle Lee, for whom Lees Ferry is named, became
the first permanent resident of the area. Lee established a ranch on the
valley floor within a large meander of the Paria River. When 4th wife Emma Lee
first saw the isolated valley that was to be her home, she supposedly cried,
"Oh, what a lonely dell".
She was the 4th of John Lee's 19 wives and 60 children.
(Photos of John D. Lee and many of his wives, plus photo of him in his coffin
after he was executed are on family web site: www.johndlee.net.
) Ever after the place was known as Lonely Dell. Crops and livestock
raised here provided economic support for the ferry operators, their families,
and others through the 1940s. John D. Lee built a cabin for Emma in January
1872 and it was known as Emma's cabin.
The Ranch Cemetery is located
about 200 yards northwest of the ranch buildings and contains graves dating
from 1874 to 1928. Buried here are four of Warren Johnson's children, who
contracted diphtheria from a passing traveler and died within a period of four
weeks. The graves in the cemetery are spread out in rows surrounded by red
dirt and the National Park Service has a cable fence around it and maintains
the grounds. (Photo of cemetery on National Park Service web site)
Records show that there were 41 babies born at Lees Ferry
from the 1870s to the 1930s and that 22 people died at Lees Ferry during that
period. Was unable to locate information on how many people are currently
buried there.
The Lonely Dell Ranch in the 1870s was apparently run with a
firm hand by Emma Batchelor Lee, the fourth wife, who did backbreaking work of
managing her husband's ferry, homesteading, and rearing six children. A
short item in Arizona Highways
magazine, May 2002, page 5, gives anecdote that she was alone as her
sixth child was being born in 1873.
She summoned her oldest child, Billy, age 12 to help with
the birth and not tell their others about their new sister until supper! She
needed an hour to rest. Husband John D. Lee was often gone, tending his
other families and evading lawmen for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
He had been sent by the church to build the ferry, but
eventually was captured and executed by firing squad at Mountain Meadows in
1877. Emma stayed on the ranch and married Franklin French and became known as
a frontier midwife and healer. She died in 1897 and a monument marks her grave
at Desert view Cemetery in Winslow.
The ranch continued to be an ideal outpost for the
fundamental Mormons who feared increasing persecution from state officials and
even from the now anti-polygamy LDS Church.
The families of Warren Johnson's sons continued to live at
the ranch even after the ferry operation ceased. By 1936 increased
visitation to the area by travelers and tourists prompted the Mormons to leave
the ranch and move to Short Creek, now Colorado City, a town on the
Arizona-Utah border.
After 1936 the Lonely Dell Ranch had a number of owners,
including the Babbitt brothers of Flagstaff fame, until it was finally procured
by the National Park Service, in 1974. The last owners stripped the ranch
of valuable furniture and other historic materials.
Fire destroyed the large Johnson home in 1926 (Warren
Johnson was father of the 4 daughters buried in the cemetery).
The National Park Service ordered the razing of Charles Spencer's
rock buildings in 1967, a move regretted today. Spencer had established mining
operations and the ill-fated, short lived "Charles Spencer" steamboat
that made only a few runs in 1911 and then sunk!
This is an interesting scenic area to visit, especially if
en route to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon via Alt. 89 from Flagstaff, The
highway crosses the Colorado via an impressive bridge over Marble Canyon, and
the road to Lees Ferry and the cemetery at Lonely Dell Ranch goes north
immediately after crossing the bridge, going west.
Map by: Neal Du Shane
Visitors can pick, in season, pears, apricots,
peaches, and plums in the fruit orchard still maintained by the NPS and watered
with Colorado River water. The fruit orchards had begun to decline after so
many years of watering with the alkaline Paria River water, so in 1989 when the
change was made they began to produce again.
There are also hiking trails going up the Paria
River and other trails from Lees Ferry area.
American Pioneer & Cemetery Research Project
Internet Presentation
Version
121408-02
WebMaster:
Neal Du Shane
Copyright © 2008 Neal Du Shane
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for personal family history purposes, but not for financial profit.
All contents of this website are willed to the American Pioneer &
Cemetery Research Project (APCRP).