Because of the long, deep canyons, Lees Ferry was the best crossing point along 500 miles of the Colorado River. In 1873, Mormon Church members opened a wagon road from Kanab, Utah, and built a ferryboat there. John D. Lee, the first ferryman, gave the site its name. Pioneers sent to settle the Little Colorado River in northern Arizona used the ferry service, and Lees Ferry grew to include a post office and a trading post. Conflict between settlers and Navajo Indians led to the construction of a fort that was never attacked. In 1911, Charles H. Spencer unsuccessfully tried to mine gold from the clay hills behind Lees Ferry Fort. For 55 years, a variety of boats carried settlers, missionaries, miners, traders, Indians, and tourists across the river, and although boats capsized and people drowned, the service continued until 1928. Built in 1912, the paddlewheel steamboat Charles H. Spencer hauled coal to Lees Ferry from Warm Creek, 28 miles upstream to fuel Spencer's gold mining machinery, but abandoned in 1914, it sank in the shallow water nearby. Spencer's machinery could not extract the fine, powdery gold dust from the Chinle clay.