George A. Johnson
American
1824 – 1903
George Alonzo Johnson was the pioneering steamboat entrepreneur of the Colorado River, whose vessels supplied Fort Yuma and carried ore and freight for the El Dorado Canyon mines, dominating river commerce in the gold rush decades.
Biography
George Alonzo Johnson was born on August 16, 1824, in New York State. He joined the rush to California in 1849, and instead of digging for gold found his opportunity in transportation. At the Yuma Crossing of the Colorado River he ran ferries for overland emigrants, then turned to the harder problem of supplying the Army's Fort Yuma, which was nearly starving on the cost of overland freight.
After early experiments with poled barges failed, Johnson brought steam to the river. From 1852 onward, his George A. Johnson & Company put a succession of stern- and side-wheelers on the Colorado, including the General Jesup and the Colorado, and held a near-monopoly on the river trade. In 1858 Johnson himself pushed the General Jesup far upriver toward Black Canyon, just ahead of the Army's Ives expedition, proving steamboats could reach the head of navigation. When silver and gold lodes were opened in El Dorado Canyon in 1861, his boats hauled the district's ore, machinery, and supplies, linking the isolated Nevada mines to the sea via the Gulf of California.
Johnson's firm was absorbed into the Colorado Steam Navigation Company in 1869, by which time railroads were beginning to erode the river trade. He later settled in San Diego, where he was prominent in business and politics, and he died on November 27, 1903, remembered as the father of steam navigation on the Colorado.