At the general conference in October, 1864, Anson, in connection with others, was given a mission to establish a colony near the Colorado river. The merchants of Salt Lake City had such difficulty in securing the necessary supply of merchandise, either from the east or from California, owing to the long distance it had to be hauled in wagons and the limited season during which the roads were passable, that the idea occurred to some one that, if shipped by steamboat up the Colorado river to as high a point as possible and there stored in a warehouse the cost of freighting might be materially reduced. It was thought too that immigrants might be brought to Utah by the same route with advantage. The merchants and others organized a company to build and own a warehouse on the Colorado river, and they employed Anson to act as their agent in carrying into effect a part of this scheme. He accordingly started about the 1st of November with a company to locate a road to the most suitable place on the Colorado river, and there build a landing and warehouse. This he did to the satisfaction of those who employed him, and returned home in March, 1865. After remaining home about one month he went again to Call's Landing on the Colorado river, accompanied by his wife Mary, and returned two and a half months later. On the 4th of August, 1867, Anson's eldest son, Anson Vasco, while returning from a mission to Europe, upon which he had been absent nearly three and a half years, died at Rock Creek, on the Laramie Plains, four hundred and twenty-three miles east of Salt Lake. He was a young man of great promise, and his death was keenly felt by his family and friends. On the 28th of October, 1870, Anson accompanied by his wife Mary and sister-in-law, Mrs. Hannah Holbrook, started on a visit to their numerous relatives in Ohio, Vermont and other places in the east, from which they returned home in January, 1871. In 1872 Anson accompanied the Palestine party, of which President George A. Smith was the leader, to England, and spent five months traveling in Great Britain and Ireland. When the Davis County Stake of Zion was organized in 1877 Anson became counselor to President Wm. R. Smith, his son Chester succeeding him as Bishop of Bountiful, formerly North Canyon Ward. The later years of Anson's life were spent in comparative peace and quietude, largely on his farm in Davis County, where, surrounded by his numerous family, he set an example of thrift and industry. But, though relieved of those strenuous duties of pioneering that occupied so much of his time in earlier years, his time was still to a very great extent devoted to laboring for the public welfare, but chiefly in Davis County, where, as a member of the Stake presidency, he was looked up to as a safe and reliable leader, who was just as ready to sacrifice his own interests and devote his influence and energies to the public weal as he had been during his more vigorous days.