Archeology and Industry: Gold Mining in Glen Canyon

Spencer’s crew in front of Lee’s Ferry fort.

Carrell, Bradford, and Rusho, Fig. 3.1

Charles Harvey Spencer (b. 1872) was an entrepreneur who tried his luck mining in and around Glen Canyon. Starting in December of 1909, he and his crew of mining specialists, laborers, and cooks established a small camp by the San Juan River. In May 1910, the camp moved to the more productive area of Lee’s Ferry within the modern-day National Recreational Area. There, they established a permanent camp, some remains of which can still be seen. National Park Service archeologists have investigated sites associated with the company.

1963 view with remains of the Charles H. Spencer steamboat in the foreground, an old ferry road, and USGS buildings.

Carrell, Bradford, and Rusho, Fig. 3.25

The camp contained many buildings, including three bunkhouses, a mess hall/kitchen with a fireplace, a separate cook’s house, a blacksmith shop, and a laboratory. They also located two root cellar holes, which may have belonged to two small houses where married workers and their wives lived. Many of the buildings were destroyed after the mining venture was abandoned in 1912. In 1967, NPS began preserving the two original Spencer buildings that remained.

Along with these structures, archeologists at Glen Canyon located artifacts and features directly connected to Spencer’s mining business. These include two boilers, 18 flume support pieces, a hose piece, and two small cuts or platforms on the hill slope where sleds or frames for monitors or hose nozzles were placed for the sluicing process. The Charles H. Spencer paddle-wheel steamboat transported coal in for the boilers from the Warm Creek mine, 28 miles away.

Charles H. Spencer steamboat in 1912 (left) and 1963 (right).

Carrell, Bradford, and Rusho, Figs. 6.2 and 6.5

The steamboat was built in 1911 in the Shultze, Robertson, Shultze South San Francisco shipyard. Over the course of six months, it was dismantled, transported, and reassembled at Warm Creek. While multiple oral accounts exist referencing it (including those within the 1929 Supreme Court case U.S. v Utah), it is still unclear how many trips it took between Warm Creek and Spencer’s mine at Lee Fort. What is clear is that the boat made its last journey between the mine and Lee Fort sometime in the spring or summer of 1912. It was then tied up on the river bank. Archeologists studying the now-submerged wreck determined that at some point after that the boat slid sideways from the bank, struck a large boulder, and sank. Parts of its upper deck were then salvaged, as evident by sawmarks in its framing.

Over the past decades, archeologists have monitored the wreck and other materials from the Spencer mining era. Today, visitors to the Glen Canyon Recreational Area can walk down the interpretive trail and view the remains. While just over 100 years old rather than thousands, these materials offer insight into an important era within Glen Canyon’s long history.

Carrell, Toni, ed., James E. Bradford, and W.L. Rusho. Submerged Cultural Resources Site Report: Charles H. Spencer Mining Operation and Paddle Wheel Steamboat. Southwest Cultural Resources Professional Papers No. 13. Southwest Cultural Resources Center, National Park Service, 1987.