This collection consists of research materials compiled by Southern California physician Frank Dolley for his study of the lower Colorado River, especially related to steam navigation, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The bulk of the collection is comprised of research materials from the 1950s including two manuscripts written by Dolley, research notes, Dolley's correspondence, and copy prints, negatives, and lantern slides of historic photographs. There are also some original materials including correspondence of Ellen Robinson (died 1913), the wife of a Colorado River steamboat pilot, and approximately fifteen photographs dating from the late 1880s.
The collection includes two manuscripts written by Dolley: "Early Pilots of the Colorado River" and "Wife at Port Isabel: A Pioneer Woman's Colorado River Letters." The first is a history of navigation on the lower Colorado River that includes a brief discussion of Spanish explorations of the Delta region but emphasizes the region's nineteenth-century history, with particular attention paid to steamboat design and pilots. Included in this manuscript are discussions of the Chemehuevi, Cocopah, and Yuma Indians, the Colorado Steam Navigation Company, Captains George H. Derby and William H. Hardy, J.C. Ives, and A. H. Wilcox. The second manuscript is an edited version of Ellen M. Robinson's letters, most between Ellen at Port Isabel on the Colorado Delta and her family in Maryland. These letters depict the experiences of a young woman moving across the country in 1869 with David Robinson, a husband she barely knew, as she tried to narrate the journey and describe her new home to her family. Among the notable experiences she relayed in her letters was a visit to the unfinished Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, a parade in San Francisco featuring General William T. Sherman, and a visit to Woodward's Gardens while staying in that city. This second manuscript was published in as "Wife at Port Isabel: A Pioneer Woman's Colorado River Letters," The Westerners Brand Book (Los Angeles Corral) vol. 7 (1957): 271-285.
The correspondence section contains Ellen Robinson's original letters from the 1870s, often with copies made by Dolley, and Dolley's correspondence with Ellen's daughter Margaret Robinson (born 1872) in the 1950s. Three of Dolley's research notebooks are included, covering numerous subjects related to the lower Colorado River region and the Colorado Delta, with particular focus on the river's steamboat activity. These notebooks have been divided for preservation and ease of use, but remain in the order in which they were found, which is loosely alphabetical by subject. There is repetition from one notebook to the other, though each also includes unique material. Most of these notes represent Dolley's research in published sources, including periodicals, narrative accounts, and regional histories, but also includes correspondence with Percy Carter Linss, a descendent of Colorado River ferry operator and landowner Hall Hanlon.
There are 95 photographic prints (chiefly copy prints with some originals including carte-de-visite portraits), 94 copy film negatives, and 12 lantern slides of various images of steamboats and towns along the Colorado River and people related to the steamers, dating from approximately 1860-approximately 1910. There are several photographs of Yuma, Arizona, taken from the 1860s to the 1890s; Ehrenberg, Arizona; and Andrade, California. Among the steamboats shown are the St. Vallier, Colorado No. 1, Colorado No. 2, Mohave, Searchlight, and Silas J. Lewis. This collection also includes maps of the Lower Colorado River and Yuma, and advertising material for a river excursion and the Pacific and Colorado Steam Navigation Company.