In 1858, Lt. Joseph Christmas Ives of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers led an expedition up the Colorado River in an iron-hulled sternwheeler called the "Explorer," to map and chart that unpredictable river. Ives was former chief assistant to Amiel W. Whipple. It was the first military craft on the river. The journey took ten days to go from the mouth of the Colorado to Yuma, about eleven miles a day. Only 50-feet long, it
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