Joseph Christmas Ives

Joseph Christmas Ives (25 December 1829 – 12 November 1868), soldier, botanist, explorer of the Colorado River in 1858.

Ives was born in New York City on Christmas Day, 1829 and was a graduate of the United States Military Academy in 1852. As a Second lieutenant from 1853 to 1854 he was appointed by the U.S. Army to the Topographical Engineers as assistant to Lt. Amiel Weeks Whipple in the Pacific Railroad survey along the 35th parallel.

From 1857 to 1858 Ives commanded an expedition to explore up the Colorado River from its mouth. He designed, built and tested his own stern-wheel steamboat, then shipped it to the Colorado River Delta. At Robinson's Landing he reassembled then used the 54-foot steamboat Explorer to map and survey the river. His party included Smithsonian associate John Strong Newberry as geologist. He led his party up the Colorado to a point just above the head of Black Canyon of the Colorado and beyond to the vicinity of Fortification Rock. Next day, they went two miles farther to Las Vegas Wash, which Ives thought might be the Virgin River, but had doubts because it seemed too small. The difficulties of the rapids above Fortification Rock convinced Ives that the river at Fortification Rock was the practical head of navigation 550 miles above the mouth of he river:

Returning to the Mohave Villages, he then struck out across northern Arizona to Fort Defiance. Ives Reported his findings in his 1861 Report upon the Colorado river of the West The Ives expedition produced one of the important early maps of the Grand Canyon drawn by Frederick W. von Egloffstein, topographer to the expedition.

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