In Mojave the town is ‘Amat Kuhwely, and in English it carries the name of a Seneca general who wrote out the surrender terms at Appomattox. This map of Parker prints the Parker Jail, La Paz County Administration, Parker Alternative School, Wallace Elementary School, Calvary Chapel of Parker and the Parker Regional Chamber of Commerce and Tourism, with Bouse Wash giving shape to the land.
Parker is a town on the Colorado River and the county seat of La Paz County.
KNOWOL made this map in 2026 and gave it the look of an old atlas. The shaded relief of the landscape comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the streets were drawn from Census Bureau files. The Parker Jail was confirmed against the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places. The town lies in Parker Valley, just south of Headgate Rock Dam and Moovalya Lake, and 3,417 people lived here at the 2020 census.
Named for Ely Parker
Ely S. Parker, born Hasanoanda at Indian Falls, New York, was a Tonawanda Seneca. He earned an engineering degree and worked on the Erie Canal, and when he tried to enlist at the start of the Civil War he was told that, as an Indian, he couldn’t join. He turned to his friend Ulysses S. Grant and was commissioned a captain in May 1863. Parker served as Grant’s adjutant and military secretary, and he helped draft the Confederate surrender documents at Appomattox in 1865, which are in his handwriting. He told friends that Robert E. Lee said he was glad to see one real American there, and that he answered, “We are all Americans.” In 1869 President Grant made him Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the first Native American to hold that office. On November 14, 2025, a New York court admitted him to the state bar, which had turned him away because Native Americans weren’t then counted as citizens.
The town’s name goes back to a post office called Parker, opened on January 6, 1871, at Parker’s Landing and the Parker Indian Agency on the Colorado River Indian Reservation, four miles downriver from today’s railroad bridge. The landing served the agency and the Army post at Camp Colorado, manned from 1864 to 1869. The town itself dates from 1908, and Earl H. Parker, a location engineer for the Arizona & California Railway, surveyed and laid out the original townsite in 1909. Parker incorporated in 1948 and became the seat of the new La Paz County on January 1, 1983. The Arizona & California Railroad still has its headquarters here, and its line crosses the Colorado on a five-span truss bridge.
Click to explore a larger preview. The digital watermark does not appear on printed maps.
Names on this map
These names are printed on this map.
Streets and roads: Booth Rd, Aqueduct Rd, Rio Vista Hwy, Resort Dr, Levee Rd, S California Ave, Farm Rd, First Ave, Riverside Dr, Shea Rd, Burns Rd, Parker Pit Rd.
More street names, A to Z
Central Ave, Industiral Ln.
On the Colorado River Indian Reservation
The original town lies on the Colorado River Indian Reservation, set aside on March 3, 1865, and Parker is the reservation’s largest community and the headquarters of the Colorado River Indian Tribes. The tribe is made up of four peoples, the Mohave, Chemehuevi, Hopi and Navajo, who keep their own traditional ways, religions and identities. Its seal, designed by John Scott in 1966, carries four feathers for the four tribes. The tribes hold senior rights to up to 719,248 acre-feet of Colorado River water a year, nearly one-third of Arizona’s share, and they own Avi Suquilla Airport, one nautical mile east of the business district, and the BlueWater Resort and Casino, opened in 1999. The Colorado River Indian Tribe Museum in Parker shows historical and contemporary art by tribal citizens, especially ceramics. Veronica Murdock, a tribal vice chair, was the first woman president of the National Congress of American Indians.
The Parker Jail went up in 1914, a cement block building 24 by 30 feet with two cells and an office. It was used as a jail until 1947, and it stands in what’s now Pop Harvey City Park. The Parker Area Historical Society began in 1972 as the “Save The Jail Committee,” and it opened its museum in 1999. Summers here are hot: on July 7, 1905, Parker reached 127 °F, at the time the highest temperature ever recorded in Arizona. La Paz County Administration, Parker Alternative School, Wallace Elementary School, Calvary Chapel of Parker, the Parker Regional Chamber of Commerce and Tourism and Bouse Wash have their places on the sheet as well.
This Parker map is a good addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the area. It’s made for anyone who calls Parker home, along the Colorado, and KNOWOL created it in 2026 to show the town as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Parker map.
Sources
