Boulder Canyon (Colorado River) steamboats as they passed over the dangerous rapids of Devil's Gate Canyon, during their high water runs to the mouth of the Virgin River at Rioville, Nevada. Boulder Canyon (Colorado River) Boulder Canyon, originally Devils Gate Canyon, is a canyon on the Colorado River, above Hoover Dam, now flooded by Lake Mead. It lies between Clark County, Nevada and Mohave County, Arizona. It heads at western end of the Virgin River Basin of Lake Mead, at about . Boulder Canyon divides the Black Mountains into the Black Mountains of Arizona, and the Black Mountains of Nevada. Its mouth is now
Steamboats of the Colorado River west side of the river sixty five miles above Fort Mohave near what was then considered the high water limit of navigation. George A. Johnson came up river and made a deal to supply the mines with his steamboats at $100 a ton, a lower price than the $240 a ton charged for overland freight across the Mojave Desert from Los Angeles. That fall news of the strikes brought a flood of miners to the canyon. Several camps were founded in the canyon. San Juan, or Upper Camp were at the top of the canyon, near modern Nelson, Nevada. Midway