Topock ( Mojave: Tuupak) is a small

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

and

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

(CDP) in

Mohave County Mohave County occupies the northwestern corner of the U.S. state of Arizona, one of 15 counties in the state. As of the 2020 census, its population was 213,267. The county seat is Kingman, and the largest city is Lake Havasu City. It is th ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population within the CDP was 2. Topock and the surrounding region have a ZIP Code of 86436; in 2010, the population of the 86436

ZCTA ZIP Code Tabulation Areas (ZCTAs) are statistical entities developed by the United States Census Bureau for tabulating summary statistics. These were introduced with the Census 2000 and continued with the 2010 Census and 5 year American Community ...

was 2,104, almost all of whom live in the Golden Shores CDP to the north. Topock lies between Bullhead City and

Lake Havasu City Lake Havasu City (, ) is a city in Mohave County, Arizona, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 57,144, up from 52,527 in 2010. It is served by Lake Havasu City Airport. History The community first started dur ...

and southeast of

Needles, California Needles is a city in San Bernardino County, in the Mojave Desert region of Southern California. Situated on the western banks of the Colorado River, Needles is located near the California border with Arizona and Nevada. The city is accessible v ...

, on the California–Arizona border. It is known for being a boating town as well as being home to the Old Trails Arch Bridge which used to be the old Route 66 bridge featured in the film ''

The Grapes of Wrath ''The Grapes of Wrath'' is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize ...

''. The crossings of the

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

at Topock, including the Old Trails Arch Bridge, are also featured prominently in the opening credits of the movie ''

Easy Rider ''Easy Rider'' is a 1969 American road drama film written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern. It was produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. Fonda and Hopper play two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and the S ...

''. Topock Marina is located just off

I-40 Interstate 40 (I-40) is a major east–west transcontinental Interstate Highway in the southeastern and southwestern portions of the United States. At a length of , it is the third-longest Interstate Highway in the country, after I-90 and ...

on Historic Route 66. Situated on the Colorado River between Needles and Lake Havasu City, the marina is the traditional refueling point for boaters traveling between these two cities. Topock is the site of one of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E)'s recompression stations on its super-rich natural gas pipeline from

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

completed in 1930.

History

Topock was originally called Mellen, a

railroad station A train station, railroad station, or railway station is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight, or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track, and a station building providing such ...

and

steamboat A steamboat is a boat that is marine propulsion, propelled primarily by marine steam engine, steam power, typically driving propellers or Paddle steamer, paddlewheels. The term ''steamboat'' is used to refer to small steam-powered vessels worki ...

landing, at the site where the

Atlantic and Pacific Railroad The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad was an American railroad that owned or operated two individual segments of track. One connected St. Louis, Missouri, with Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the other connected Albuquerque, New Mexico, with Needles in Southe ...

built the

Red Rock Bridge The Red Rock Bridge was a bridge across the Colorado River at Topock, Arizona, Topock, Arizona that carried the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. It was built in 1890, replacing a wooden bridge dating to 1883 that was repeatedly washed out during sp ...

, a

steel Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that demonstrates improved mechanical properties compared to the pure form of iron. Due to steel's high Young's modulus, elastic modulus, Yield (engineering), yield strength, Fracture, fracture strength a ...

cantilever bridge A cantilever bridge is a bridge built using structures that project horizontally into space, supported on only one end (called cantilevers). For small footbridges, the cantilevers may be simple beam (structure), beams; however, large cantilever ...

across the Colorado River in May 1890 after three of its earlier less well-built bridges had been washed away by the river upstream at a poorly chosen site at

Eastbridge Eastbridge is a village in the English county of Suffolk. It is located approximately north of Leiston, from the North Sea in the parish of Theberton, immediately south of the Minsmere RSPB reserve. It borders the Minsmere River which cuts t ...

, southeast of

. The town was named for Captain "Jack" Mellon, a 40-year veteran Colorado River steamboat captain and an owner of the Colorado Steam Navigation Company, though it was misspelled as "Mellen". From 1903 to 1909 Mellen had its own post office.John and Lillian Theobald, ''Arizona Territory Post Offices & Postmasters'', The Arizona Historical Foundation, Phoenix, 1961.

Topock PG&E compressor station

PG&E began delivering natural gas to

and northern California in 1930 through the longest pipeline in the world, connecting the Texas gas fields to northern California with compressor stations that included compressor stations with cooling towers every , at Topock, Arizona, on the state line, and near the town of

Hinkley, California Hinkley is an unincorporated community in the Mojave Desert, in San Bernardino County, California, United States, 14 miles (23 km) northwest of Barstow, 59 miles (95 km) east of Mojave, north of Victorville and about a 120 mile (19 ...

. Today there is a network of eight compressor stations linked by "40,000 miles of distribution pipelines and over 6,000 miles of transportation pipelines" serving "4.2 million customers from Bakersfield to the Oregon border." In the 1950s and 1960s, at both Topock and Hinkley compressor stations,

hexavalent chromium Hexavalent chromium (chromium(VI), Cr(VI), chromium 6) is any chemical compound that contains the element chromium in the +6 oxidation state (thus hexavalent). It has been identified as carcinogenic, which is of concern since approximately of ...

in the form of an additive was used in rust-prevention in "the cooling towers that prepared the gas for transportation through PG&E's pipeline to northern and central California." These cooling waters were then disposed of "adjacent to the compressor stations." Topock Compressor Station is located in eastern

San Bernardino County, California San Bernardino County ( ), officially the County of San Bernardino and sometimes abbreviated as S.B. County, is a County (United States), county located in the Southern California, southern portion of the U.S. state of California, and is locat ...

, approximately southeast of Needles, along the

. In 1996 following the Hinkley groundwater contamination lawsuits related to the dumping of hexavalent chromium, PG&E began "an investigation and cleanup process governed by the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). PG&E continues to provide reports on their soil investigation and remedial activities at the Topock compressor station site regarding potential future impacts to the Colorado River and to Arizona's groundwater.

Demographics

Education

It is in the Topock Elementary School District and the Colorado River Union High School District.
Text list
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Gallery

File:Arizona - Topock - NARA - 23933795 (cropped).jpg, Topock in May 1932 File:Topock-Old US Highway 66 (Route 66) underpass-1945.jpg, Old and historic US Highway 66 (Route 66) Santa Fe underpass built in 1945 File:Topock-Railroad Water Tank.jpg, Santa Fe Water Tank on the historic Route 66 built in 1906 Image:TopockMarsh02.jpg, Topock Marsh

References

External links

Construction of Red Rock Cantilever Bridge nearing completion in 1890. Below Needles.
from hdl.huntington.org Huntington Digital Library, accessed June 30, 2015.
Building of the Topock Bridge. The steamer is the "Gila."
from hdl.huntington.org Huntington Digital Library, accessed June 30, 2015.
Train crossing completed bridge at Red Rock Cantilever Bridge.
from hdl.huntington.org Huntington Digital Library, accessed June 30, 2015. {{authority control Unincorporated communities in Mohave County, Arizona Communities in the Lower Colorado River Valley Lower Colorado River Valley Unincorporated communities in Arizona Arizona populated places on the Colorado River