Old days on The Mighty River
Early pioneers used steamboats on Mokelumne to Lockeford
By Matt Brown
News-Sentinel Staff Writer
Before man sought to harness the river with dams and levees, the mighty Mokelumne was a much different beast than the narrow, nearly evaporated waterway of today.
An unbridled torrent of water gushed out of the Sierra Nevada into the Central Valley, leaving the land from Clements to the Delta prone to seasonal floods.
In the 1860s, when steamboats were king of California's waterways, two San Joaquin County pioneers — Jeremiah Woods and Dr. Dean J. Locke — looked to capitalize on trade up the Mokelumne River. The steamboat industry spawned a rivalry and would pit two burgeoning towns against each other for control of the waterway.
Woods, the founder of Woodbridge, was a shrewd businessman prone to shady dealings. He was also a bit rough around the edges and met his end after being stabbed in a bar fight.
Locke, who founded Lockeford, was Woods' polar opposite. A religious man, Locke took pride in his education.
"You could tell a Locke from a mile away, but when he got up to you, you couldn't tell him a thing," local historian Ralph Lea said.
In 1861 and 1862, floods swelled the Mokelumne's banks and San Joaquin County was a giant lake. Roads and rail lines were wiped out, effectively choking major supply routes for gold miners in the foothills. Woods' toll bridge at the fledgling town of Woodbridge was destroyed.
"The water was deep enough to go over modern day Elliott Road," Lockeford Historical Society president Gary Gordon said.
The river was at least 12 feet deep and a half-mile wide, Gordon said.
Locke hoped to make his town the head of river navigation between San Francisco and the mines. He commissioned a steamship, the Fanny Ann, to travel up the Mokelumne from San Francisco to Lockeford in February 1862.
"It was the first steamship to travel that far east on the river," Lea said.
When the boat reached Woodbridge, the calculating Woods convinced the captain that the river ahead was unnavigable and persuaded him to stop and unload his cargo.
"Woods wanted his town to be the farthest any steamer could travel so it would be the head of navigation and the transportation center of the region," Lea said.
Not to be outdone, Locke went back to San Francisco, hired another boat called the Pert, and told the captain he would be paid only upon reaching Lockeford.
Old drawings of the Pert show that it was small for riverboats of the time — about 100 feet long. It had a paddle wheel on the back, a wheel house for the captain and a single smoke stack, which gave off black smoke from burning oak wood.
Lea said the Pert was loaded with 50 tons of freight and 60 passengers. On April 5, 1862, the ship sailed up the Mokelumne past Woodbridge and docked at Lockeford.
"The deed is done," Locke's wife, Delia Locke, wrote in her diary. "We no longer say a steamboat can come up the Mokelumne to Lockeford. She has arrived!"
The "port" of Lockeford was located near present day Elliot Road, Gordon said.
"The boats had gang planks that they could pull onto shore," he said. "Or perhaps there was a small wooden platform there — nothing expansive."
Locke organized the Mokelumne Steam Navigation Company, which plied the river with three steamers for the next three years. Gordon speculated that supplies for the mines and stores in Lockeford were shipped upriver. The boats went back downriver with produce from Lockeford's farms to sell in San Francisco. On one occasion, a steamboat made it as far east as Clements, Gordon said.
By 1865, the river had returned to its normal level and was beginning to become choked with debris. This, combined with the dwindling of mining operations and the rise of the railroads, made the steam liner company unprofitable.
Lea said Locke sold the Pert in 1865 to cover his debts, but no source mentions when the last steamer made its way to Lockeford.
After the Pert was sold, it hit a snag and sank near the site of today's Tretheway Road, according to Lea. Some of the machinery was salvaged and most of the rest of the boat has disintegrated over time.
The wheelhouse could still be seen sticking out of the water up until the 1930s, according to Gordon. Now however, the Pert, along with the dreams of steamboat navigation on the river, are buried in the thick mud at the bottom of the Mokelumne.