"There was shipment of some goods from that point, though at first there were some disappointments and dissatisfaction among the Salt Lake merchants who patronized the route. Two steamboats, the Esmeralda and Nina Tilden made the trip somewhat regularly from the mouth of the Colorado to Call's Landing, connecting with steamships plying between the mouth of the Colorado and San Francisco. The owners of the river boats carried a standing advertisement in the Salt Lake Telegraph, thus seeking trade, up to December 1, 1866. Doubtless the certainty of the early completion of the transcontinental railroad from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean stopped the development of this southwest route for immigration and freight, via Utah's southern settlements and the Colorado River." The port of Callville had only a short life. In June, 1869, the Deseret News printed an article that Callville then had been abandoned. This was in connection with the escape of three horsethieves from St. George. These men wrenched four large doors from the Callville warehouse for the construction of a raft, upon which they committed themselves to the river at flood time, leaving horses and impedimenta behind. Whether they escaped has not been chronicled. As late as 1892, the walls of the old storehouse still were standing, the only remaining evidences of a scheme of broad ambition designed to furnish a new supply route for a region comprising at least one-fourth of the national expanse. [Illustration: PRESIDENT BRIGHAM YOUNG AND PARTY AT THE MOUTH OF THE VIRGIN, MARCH 17, 1870. Others in the party are: Amelia Young, Geo. A. Smith, Bathsheba W. Smith, John Taylor, Erastus Snow, Minerva Snow, Jos. W., Lorenzo D. and Brigham Young, Jr., B.S. and Albert C. Young, A.S. Gibbons, Jno. W. Young, Nathaniel V. Jones, John Squires, Joseph Asay, Van Ettu, Levi Stewart. Photo by C.R. Savage] [Illustration: BAPTISM OF SEVERAL HUNDRED SHIVWITS INDIANS BY DAVID H. CANNON AT ST. GEORGE] Chapter Eleven In the Virgin and Muddy Valleys First Agriculture in Northern Arizona There can be no doubt that the first agricultural settlement in northern Arizona was by a Mormon party, led by Henry W. Miller, which made location at Beaver Dams, on the north bank of the Virgin River on the earlier Mormon road to California. On a tract of land lying six miles below the point where the river emerges from a box canyon, land was cleared in the fall of 1864, crops were put in "and then the enterprise was dedicated to the Lord," according to a report by the leader at Salt Lake. An item in the Deseret News tells that Miller was "called" in the fall of 1863 to go to the Virgin.