Pre-colonial indigenous peoples Small numbers of
Paleo-Indians of the
Clovis and
Folsom cultures inhabited the Colorado Plateau as early as 10,000 BCE, with populations beginning to increase in the Desert Archaic period (6000 BCE–0 CE). While most early inhabitants were hunter-gatherers, evidence of agriculture, masonry dwellings and
petroglyphs begins with the
Fremont culture period (0–1300 CE). The
Ancient Puebloan culture, also known as Anasazi or Hisatsinom, were descended from the Desert Archaic culture and became established in the Four Corners region around 1000 CE. While there is much evidence of ancient habitation along the Colorado River, including stone dwellings, petroglyphs and pottery in places such as Glen Canyon, the first major agriculture-based societies arose a significant distance from the river. The
Puebloan people built many multi-story pueblos or "great houses", and developed complex distribution systems to supply drinking and irrigation water in
Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico and
Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado. The
Hohokam, present in the modern Phoenix area since about 0 CE, experienced prolific growth around 600–700 CE as they constructed a large system of irrigation canals making use of the
Salt River. Both civilizations supported large populations at their height, with 6,000–15,000 in Chaco Canyon and as many as 30,000–200,000 Hohokam. Puebloan and Hohokam settlements were abruptly abandoned in the 1400s CE, due both to over-exploitation of natural resources such as timber, and severe drought that made it impossible to maintain irrigation systems. Many Puebloans migrated east to the Rio Grande Valley, while others persisted in smaller settlements on the Colorado Plateau. Puebloan descendants include the
Hopi,
Zuni,
Laguna and
Acoma peoples of modern Arizona and New Mexico. The lower Colorado River valley was inhabited for thousands of years by numerous tribes of the
Patayan cultures, many of which belong to the
Yuman-Cochimi language group. These include the
Walapai,
Havasupai and
Yavapai in the Grand Canyon region; the
Mohave,
Halchidhoma,
Quechan, and
Halyikwamai along the Colorado River between Black Canyon and the Mexican border, and the
Cocopah around the Colorado River Delta. The
Chemehuevi (a branch of the
Southern Paiute) and the
Kumeyaay inhabited the desert to the river's west. Those living along the lower Colorado River depended more on fishing and floodplain agriculture than on irrigation, and mostly did not live in permanent settlements. The site of modern-day Yuma has been
an important river crossing since ancient times, as the channel here is much narrower compared to the expansive, swampy river bottoms to the north and south, and enabled the expansion of trade to the Pima and Maricopa in the east and coastal California tribes in the west. The Navajo gradually displaced Hopi settlements as they expanded into northern Arizona after the 1500s.
Navajo Mountain and
Rainbow Bridge in the Glen Canyon area came to hold particular religious significance for the Navajo, and the nearby confluence of the Colorado and San Juan River is regarded as the birthplace of clouds and rain. The
Ute also became established in the Colorado Plateau around 1500 CE, although they had inhabited more northerly parts of the Colorado basin (modern Wyoming and northern Colorado) since at least 0 CE. They are the first known inhabitants of this part of the Rocky Mountains, and made use of an extensive network of trails crisscrossing the mountains to move between summer and winter camps. The Ute were divided into numerous bands with separate territories but shared a common language and customs. The Uncompahgre or Tabeguache lived around the confluence of the upper Colorado and Gunnison Rivers, an area including the
Grand Mesa; the Weenuchiu lived along the San Juan River, and the Parianuche and Yamparika lived in the Yampa,
White and
Duchesne River valleys. The Ute ranged as far as the river's headwaters; one Ute story recounts a battle with the
Arapaho at Grand Lake, which they believe still hosts the spirits of the deceased.
Spanish exploration and early settlement , depicts
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's 1540–1542 expedition.
García López de Cárdenas can be seen overlooking the
Grand Canyon. Starting in the 1500s, the Spanish began to explore and colonize western North America.
Francisco de Ulloa may have been the first European to see the river, when in 1536 he sailed to the head of the Gulf of California. In 1540
García López de Cárdenas became the first European to see the Grand Canyon, during
Coronado's expedition to find the
Seven Cities of Gold ("Cibola"). Cárdenas was apparently unimpressed with the canyon, greatly underestimating its size, and left in disappointment with no gold to be found. In the same year
Melchior Díaz explored the Colorado River's delta and named it
Rio del Tizon ("fire brand river"), after seeing a practice used by the local people for warming themselves. By the late 1500s or early 1600s, the Utes had acquired horses from the Spanish, and their use for hunting, trade and warfare soon became widespread among Utes and Navajo in the Colorado River basin. This conferred them a military advantage over
Goshutes and
Southern Paiutes that were slower to adopt horses. The Navajo also adopted a culture of livestock herding as they acquired sheep and goats from the Spanish. The name
Rio Colorado first appears in 1701, on the map "Paso por Tierra a la California" published by missionary
Eusebio Kino, who also determined during that time that Baja California was a peninsula, not an island as previously believed. In the 1700s and early 1800s many Spanish and American explorers believed in the existence of a
Buenaventura River that ran from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast. In 1776,
Silvestre Vélez de Escalante attached this name to the upper Green River, and a number of later maps showed this connecting to Lake Timpanogos (now
Utah Lake) and flowing west to California. The
Dominguez–Escalante expedition first reached the Colorado River near the junction with the
Dolores River, naming the larger river "Rio San Rafael". They later forded the Colorado in southeastern Utah at
Crossing of the Fathers, now submerged in Lake Powell.
American exploration 's second Colorado River expedition in
Marble Canyon, 1872. In the 1820s, American fur trappers along the upper Green River in Wyoming (known to them as the "Seedskeedee" or variants thereof), seeking a route to export furs to the coast, surmised that this and what the Spanish called the Colorado were in fact connected.
William H. Ashley made an unsuccessful attempt to navigate from the Green River to the Colorado's mouth in 1825. In 1826,
Jedediah Smith arrived at the lower Colorado River, referring to it as the Seedskeedee, and proceeded upstream, exploring as far as Black Canyon. Although the Grand River was renamed the Colorado in 1921, its name survives in numerous places such as Grand County and Grand Junction, Colorado. In 1848 the U.S. Army established
Fort Yuma, creating the first permanent U.S. settlement along the river. This served as a military garrison and supply point for settlers headed to California along the
Southern Emigrant Trail. Due to the arduous task of ferrying supplies overland, the schooner
Invincible attempted to bring supplies up the river but was thwarted by the delta's strong tides. Steamboats were brought to the river, starting in 1852 with the sidewheeler
Uncle Sam, whose first voyage from the Gulf to Yuma took fifteen days. Exploration by steamboat soon advanced upriver. In 1857, George A. Johnson in the
General Jesup was able to reach
Pyramid Canyon, over north of Fort Yuma. He was followed by Lt.
Joseph Christmas Ives who used a specially built shallow-draft steamboat,
Explorer, to reach
Black Canyon, where Hoover Dam stands today. Having set out to determine the river's suitability as a navigation route, Ives remarked: "Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality. It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed." The last part of the Colorado River to be surveyed was the Grand Canyon itself. In 1869,
John Wesley Powell with nine men set out on
an expedition from
Green River Station, Wyoming. They were the first party of non-natives to travel the length of the Grand Canyon, and the first to successfully travel by boat from the upper Green River to the lower Colorado. Powell led a second expedition in 1871, with financial backing from the U.S. government, and continued to conduct geographical and botanical surveys across the region until the 1890s. Another Grand Canyon river expedition was led in 1889–1890 by
Robert Brewster Stanton to survey a route for a proposed railroad through the canyon, which was never built.
U.S. westward expansion and military campaigns of Fort Yuma, c. 1875 In 1858, gold was discovered on the Gila River east of Yuma, then along the Colorado River at
El Dorado Canyon, Nevada and
La Paz, Arizona. As prospectors and settlers entered the region, they became involved in skirmishes with the Mohave, spurring U.S. Army expeditions that culminated in the 1859 Battle of the Colorado River which concluded the
Mohave War. In the 1870s the Mohave were moved to the
Fort Mohave and
Colorado River reservations. Chemehuevi and later some Hopi and Navajo peoples were also moved to the Colorado River reservation, where they today form the
Colorado River Indian Tribes. As the American frontier expanded into the Colorado Plateau, an effort to expel the Navajo from the Four Corners region was begun by General
James Henry Carleton, who in 1864 enlisted mountain man
Kit Carson to lead a campaign against the Navajo. Carson, with the help of the Navajo's Ute enemies, captured more than 8,000 Navajo and forcibly marched them to
Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Hundreds died during what is now known as the
Long Walk and while enduring appalling conditions at Fort Sumner. After the failure of the Army to maintain the reservation there, the
Treaty of Bosque Redondo established the
Navajo Nation in the Four Corners, where the Navajo were allowed to return in 1868. Gold and silver were also discovered in the Upper Basin, beginning with the 1859 Blue River strike that led to the founding of
Breckenridge, Colorado. Up until the 1860s, southwestern Colorado had remained relatively untouched by U.S. westward expansion, as the Americans had recognized Ute sovereignty by treaty. Following the 1861 carving out of
Colorado Territory and further mineral strikes including
Ouray and
Telluride, Ute leaders were coerced into signing the 1873
Brunot Agreement, in which they lost rights to most of their land. A flood of mineral prospecting and settlement ensued in western Colorado. By 1881, the Army had driven out the remaining pockets of Ute resistance on the Western Slope, officially opening the Grand River country to settlement, and the town of Grand Junction was incorporated a year later. The
Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (D&RGW) quickly expanded into this area to serve mining boomtowns, crossing the Rockies to the south via the
Black Canyon of the Gunnison River. By 1883 the railroad had reached Grand Junction, and a spur up the Colorado to Glenwood Springs was completed in 1887. In
Arizona and
Utah Territories, many early settlers were Mormons fleeing religious persecution in the Midwest. Mormons founded agricultural colonies at Fort Santa Clara in 1855 and
St. Thomas, now flooded under Lake Mead, in 1865.
Stone's Ferry, crossing the Colorado at the mouth of the Virgin River, enabled shipping of their produce by wagon to gold mining districts further south. Although the Mormons abandoned St. Thomas in 1871, a salt-
mining industry persisted here, and steamboats operated up to nearby
Rioville into the 1880s. In 1879
a group of Mormon settlers made their way to southeastern Utah, blasting the precarious
Hole in the Rock Trail to cross the Colorado River at Glen Canyon, subsequently establishing the community of
Bluff. Due to the dry climate, these settlements depended heavily on irrigation. In central Arizona, settlers uncovered and re-established canals previously used by the Hohokam. Following tensions between Mormon settlers and the U.S. government in the
Utah War, a
local militia including
John D. Lee perpetrated the 1857
Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which 120 non-Mormon settlers were killed. Fearing retribution, Lee moved in 1870 to the remote Pahreah Crossing in Arizona, where he took over a ferry first established in 1864 by
Jacob Hamblin. This, the only river crossing for hundreds of miles not hemmed in by vertical canyon walls, became known as
Lee's Ferry. While Lee was tried and subsequently executed in 1877, the ferry remained a major transportation link until the
Navajo Bridge was completed nearby in 1928, rendering the ferry obsolete. The
Denver and Salt Lake Railway (D&SL), incorporated in 1902, sought to provide a more direct connection between Denver and
Salt Lake City than either the
transcontinental railroad through Wyoming or the D&RGW's route via Black Canyon and Durango. The D&SL completed a rail line into the upper headwaters of the Colorado River and blasted the
Moffat Tunnel under the Continental Divide, but ran out of money before even reaching Utah.
Renaming of the upper Colorado River As late as 1921, the Colorado River upstream from the confluence with the Green River in Utah was still known as the Grand River. For over a decade, U.S. Representative
Edward T. Taylor of Colorado had petitioned the
Congressional Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce to rename the Grand River as the Colorado River. Representatives from Wyoming, Utah, and the
United States Geological Survey objected, noting that the Green River was longer and drained a larger area. Taylor argued that the Grand River should be considered the main stream, as it carried the larger volume of water. On July 25, 1921,
President Warren G. Harding signed House Joint Resolution 32 - To change the name of the Grand River in Colorado and Utah to the Colorado River. ==Engineering and development==