In the early 1930’s, Bob Orchard became the new owner of Road’s End Camp, and by 1934, Parker Dam construction was underway.  After the dam’s completion in 1938, the mine at Road’s End was under the new Lake Havasu.  The one time mining claim became a fishing camp. 
             According to Orchard, leases were on a year-to-year permit, until the late 1940’s, when he obtained a long-term lease.  He incorporated under the name Road’s End Camp, Inc. around 1949, and attempted to sell shares to finance development of the camp.
            Bob Orchard built the first store on the site around 1940, and he and his son-in-law built the dirt airstrip at the site, around 1945.  Although it started as a practical joke, a pair of pants hanging from a flagpole beside the store indicated they were open for business. The road to the camp hasn’t changed much since Orchard’s day. The campsite is located 12-miles north of Parker Dam, California. The last eight miles into the park is a rugged dirt road winding through Whipple Wash and still vulnerable to flash floods.
            The Road’s End mine was not the only thing under water after the completion of the dam.  Because the new lake was wider than the river, shoreline disappeared under water. Tribes that occupied the area lost some of their land.  In 1949, the Department of Interior specified payment for the Mohave and Chemehuevi Tribes, paid by Metropolitan Water. 
             By 1963, (the same year Robert McCulloch purchased the land that would become Lake Havasu City) a new corporation emerged, Havasu Palms, Inc. The next year Havasu Palms signed a 20-year lease with the Federal Fish and Wildlife for what was once Road’s End Camp. The owners included Noel Keefer Jr., Noel Keefer Sr., Homer Willis, Melvin Wooley, and Everette Sickles.
             That same year, in 1964, according to Stephen Beckham, professor of history at Lewis and Clark College, the Chemehuevi Tribe received a second payment for the land along the Colorado River.
           According to the professor,  the Indian Claims Commission rendered a judgment in favor of the Tribe for $996,834.81 for "aboriginal lands including whatever interest it may have possessed in the alleged Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation on the west bank of the Colorado River".
            In the early 1960’s our family used to take water ski trips, camping along the Colorado River, between Parker and Parker Dam. We lived in Covina, California, and my father, Walter Clint Johnson was a successful general contractor, working primarily in commercial construction. My mother, Caroline Glandon Johnson, was a traditional homemaker. They had two children, my older sister, Lynn, and me.