The Canyon Diablo Train Robbers AND The Sheriff Buckey O'Neill Posse crossed the Colorado River at Lees Ferry. The circumstances of their crossings will be told in a separate blog post. Our challenge has always been to fully describe the ferry boat they crossed the river in. In 1889, the ferry was oar powered. Until January 19, 2020, we were unable to find a photo of Warren Johnson's oar-powered ferry. That's when Lyman Forsythe came to the rescue. He sent us the photo below and merely asked "Have you seen the image of Buffalo Bill crossing at Lee's Ferry?"
Well, no, we sure hadn't. Lyman's photo gift was a thunderbolt out of the blue. We've been hoping for weeks to find a photo just like this. Imagine our glee when we could not only look at Johnson's oar ferry but Buffalo Bill, too! And can you imagine our glee when we became 99.999% certain that THIS is the Very Same ferry boat used for carry both the robbers and the posse across The Colorado River. Lyman's Gift Photo today stopped us right in our tracks and we ignored all other plans. We devoted the lion's share (pun intended) of our time this Sunny Sunday to collecting graphics and sources for this blog post.
First things first--THANK YOU, Lyman! This is a fabulous photo and we're going to be able to all sorts of fun stuff with it. Comments are below each photo or and sources links are at the end of the post.
Above is the photo as it appear in our Facebook Messenger inbox this morning.
This is an enlarged clip we made from Lyman's submission. Using this view of the oar-powered boat we can guesstimate that it was roughly 40 feet long and 8 feet wide with 12 foot oars. We will have an expert scale a more precise dimensional drawing.
And here's a tighter clip from the enlarged photo. Buffalo Bill is the guy with the goatee wearing the checked vest. We were actually a lot more curious about the far guy on the back right.
We found another version of the photo from a different source. Note the blurred human figure. People had to stand very still to get their picture taken back in those days of long exposures. The blurred human obviously didn't get the memo.
Well, one thing led to another and we used some devious online voodoo and found a much higher quality scan of the photo located in of all places, The Buffalo Bill Center of The West! We really wanted to take a close look at the geezer at the far right in the back of the boat. Why? Well, with the higher resolution scan, we can clearly see he is holding the "sweep". It's a powerful steering device that when used on conjunction with the oars wold provide unerring navigation across a river such as The Colorado.
Source:
http://library.centerofthewest.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/BBOA/id/3104/rec/1
Oar powered ferries go way, way back in history. By the 18th Century in America, they were widely used on Eastern Rivers. Above is a model of a ferry said to have been used to help Washington cross the Delaware River in 1776.
Here's another view of the model as loaded with heavy artillery.
And a close up of the ferry ramp and oars. If you look close at Lyman's Gift Photo, you will see striking similarities between the 1776 version and the 1880 rendition.
Of course, we really wanted to know when Buffalo Bill and his party would have crossed The Colorado River. We learned from an article linked below that Buffalo Bill visited the North Rim of Gran Canyon in late 1892. But when? Luckily, we found a public domain copy of G.K. Woods famous book and narrowed it down somewhat. Buffalo Bill and party were at John Hance's camp on November 14, 1892. Chances are good that they crossed The Colorado River not long afterwards.
(Note: You can download a copy of G.K. Woods book using the link above. It's a classic!)
Here is a link to an excellent account of the Buffalo Bill North Rim trip.
https://centerofthewest.org/2017/11/17/points-west-north-rim-adventure/
Here's a link to the source of the model photos.
https://www.living-in-the-past.com/ferrymodel2015.html
This is the source of the second view of the boat--the one with the blurred human.
http://www.utahsdixie.info/hs/x06-leesferry.html
Based on the article about Buffalo Bill's North Rim trip, it would appear the Lees Ferry boat photo was created by W.H. Broach.
Here is a great 2002 archives article about the Buffalo Bill trip as described by a historic Family from House Rock Valley.
https://azdailysun.com/buffalo-bill-northern-arizona-s-first-tourist/article_b3c9ed11-04c4-5432-9dbb-97fe1f05e60f.html
Lyman also send a screen clip of an additional source of the original photo. It appears to be located within the NAU archives and we hope to go look at it soon.
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