Lot
749 
Wells, Fargo & Co., Ehrenberg, Dec 8, blue oval cancel 3¢ green entire with "Wells, Fargo & Co." paid frank from the Whipple correspondence to San Diego Cal., photocopy of original 1877 letter accompanies; restored at right slightly affecting indicia, Fine appearance.Estimate $750 - 1,000.
THE ONLY RECORDED WELLS FARGO & CO. EHRENBERG USE.
The winter snows of 1868 brought devastating spring floods to the Colorado River and interrupted the easy steamboat service La Paz had enjoyed. The heavy river flow scoured the mainstream of the Color River so deeply that steamers could no longer gain access to the town of La Paz by the shallow La Paz slough. Efforts to link La Paz to the mainstream nearly two miles away by a corduroy wagon road proved unsuccessful. Such isolation from steamboat traffic marked the rapid decay of La Paz as the principal supply point on the river. In a very short time the firm of Gray & Co. dissolved. The town's next largest mercantile firm, J. Goldwater & Bro., built a new store and warehouse on more solid ground near the east anchore of the Bradshaw Ferry six miles to the south. Thus began an exodus from La Paz and the conversion of the scattered adobes and jacals of Olive City and Mineral City into a new thriving community that Mike Goldwater - grandfather of Arizona's U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater - decided to call Ehrenberg for a German friend who had been murdered by Indias in 1866. By 1871, there were only two Wells Fargo offices in Arizona Territory - at Ehrenberg and Arizona City (Yuma).
Realized: $475