Cottonwood_Island_(Nevada)
Cottonwood Island (Nevada)
Island in the Colorado River
Cottonwood Island, a large island in the Colorado River, within Cottonwood Valley, in Clark County, Nevada. Cottonwood Island was a low-lying island about 10 miles long and up to 3 miles wide. It was forested by cottonwoods and also after the spring flood, cluttered with driftwood from the riparian woodlands along the upper watershed of the Colorado River, washed down and caught in the first wide valley where the river slowed and spread out. Cottonwood Island was important as a source wood and of fuel for steamboats on that river and for the early mills and mines in El Dorado Canyon.
John Ross Browne described it in his 1869 report on the Colorado River:
- "Cottonwood island, about 10 miles long by an average of about three miles wide, is a fine, level island, fertile and covered with grass, and having considerable timber. Claims are said to have been located upon the land, but it is yet unoccupied. On the main land on both sides of the river opposite Cottonwood island are fine bottom lands, with good grass."
- "A large quantity of driftwood of superior kind for fuel, composed mainly of pitch-pine and cedar, every year lodges at the head and along the sides of the island — sufficient, perhaps, alone, if taken care of, to furnish the fuel for years to steamboats passing on the Callville route. An immense quantity of this wood was upon the island, estimated at several thousand cords. The entire head of the island seemed to be formed of trunks of trees and sand washed in between them. The driftwood consists of trees, much broken up, of various sizes, not usually exceeding 14 inches in diameter."[1]: 464
Cottonwood Island appears in the 1875 Topographical Sketch showing the Outward and Inward Route of a Party, while examining as to the practicability of a Diversion of the Colorado River for Purposes of Irrigation, from an annual report by 1st Lt. G. M. Wheeler, Corps Of Engineers.[2] Cottonwood Island later appears on a September 1911 reprint of a U. S. Geological Survey, Reconnaissance Map, Arizona, Nevada, California, Camp Mohave Sheet, Edition of March 1892, reprinted.[3]