After Kino's death in 1711 there was a lull in the entradas to the Colorado, though Ugarte, coming up along the eastern coast of Lower California, sailed to the mouth of the river in July, 1721.
Twenty-four years later (1744) Padre Jacobo Sedelmair went down the Gila from Casa Grande to the great bend, and from there cut across to the Colorado at about the mouth of Bill Williams Fork, but his journey was no more fruitful than those of his predecessors in the last two centuries.

It seems extraordinary in these days that men could traverse a country, even so infrequently, during two whole centuries and yet know almost nothing about it.

Two years after Sedelmair touched the Colorado, Fernando Consag, looking for mission sites, came up the gulf to its mouth, and when he had sailed away there was another long interval before the river was again visited by Europeans.

This time it was over a quarter of a century, but the activity then begun was far greater than ever before, and the two padres who now became the foremost characters in the drama that so slowly moved upon the mighty and diversified stage of the South-west, were quite the equals in tireless energy of the Jesuit Kino.

These two padres were Garces and Escalante, more closely associated with the history of the Basin of the Colorado than any one who had gone before.