Hey Nineteen, Here's The Last Party of Whites to Visit The South Rim of The Grand Canyon

 January 11, 2026

   It was 169 years ago today, that Joseph Christmas Ives took off from Fort Yuma to explore the upper Colorado River and see if there was a back waterway into Utah to subvert, or at least check, the rising tide of Mormons in case they, you know, massacred a wagon train, or something.

Ives's sternwheeler The Explorer

(a 54-foot "water borne wheelbarrow")

   After exploring all the way up to Black Canyon, where Hoover Dam is today, Ives came back down the river and met a cavalry unit from Fort Yuma who had herded 150 mules up the river country (not an easy task) for Ives and crew to mount up and set off and explore the country between about where Needles is today to Fort Defiance in New Mexico.  

   On page 95 of Lt. Joseph Christmas Ives report there is a Hartley map with the designation R.R. Pass. The report entry dated March 30, 1858 reads, "The next day, after proceeding one or two miles along the pass which was first like a canyon, then a regular pass, we emerged from the Cerbat range. We called it Railroad Pass.'"

The east end of Railroad Pass across from my father's old Phillips 66 gas station on Hilltop.

   Now, the Ives Expedition was east bound, but just prior to this, Ned Beale and his Camel Corp approached the same pass heading westbound.

"Ned Beale leading his Camel Corp

into Railroad Canyon"

(this original painting is owned by Toby Orr of Kingman, Arizona fame)

Ives Strikes Out

   Lieutenant Joseph Christmas Ives graduated from West Point in 1852 and the following year he was assigned to the storied Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, an elite group of West Point Grads whose mission was to survey the vast reaches of the American West.

   In 1857, with a possible war with the Mormons in Utah looming, the Army appropriated $75,000 to finance a survey to find out how much of the Colorado River was navigable in order to transport troops and equipment into Utah. A 54-foot iron-hulled sternwheeler was assembled in Philadelphia and named the Explorer. It was tested on the Delaware River where it had poor grades, disassembled and hauled by schooner to San Francisco, then to the mouth of the Colorado River. There in gale-force winds Lt. Ives and his crew re-assembled the little paddle-wheeler and launched it by moonlight at high tide on December 30th.

   She was the first military craft on the Colorado River. The American flag flapped in the breeze from the observation deck as she churned her way up the river to Yuma. Despite its strange appearance, Ives was proud of his boat, but the expedition’s artist, Baldwin Möllhausen, described her as resembling a “water-borne wheelbarrow.” Even the local natives, the Yuma and Cocopah, snickered at the weird-looking military craft, dubbing it the, “chiquito boat.”

   Despite the ridicule, the little “Explorer,” managed to plow its way up the Colorado River, past Fort Yuma, all the way to Black Canyon, in the vicinity of today’s Hoover Dam, and demonstrate the navigability of the river.

On the way back down the river, Lt. Ives left his ship and struck out on mules to explore the plateaus, with native guides (probably Hualapais), who took him to see the Grand Canyon.  Ives wasn’t impressed. He made this prophetic claim: “It can be approached, only from the south and after entering it there is nothing to do but leave. Ours has been the first and will doubtless be the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality.”

Daily Scratchboard Whip Out:

"Lt. Ives Rejects the Grand Canyon

On Behalf of All White People Everywhere"

   Around five million people (many of them White) visit the Grand Canyon every year.

   It started with a tickle in my throat two days before New Years and then next thing you know I had a fever and a cough and, well, welcome to "subclade K" (a stupid name for a new strain of flu), especially since I just had three preventative shots at Walgreen's not more than a week before. Like all vaccine believers, I have rationalized this to "If I hadn't had the shots, it would probably have been worse."

Hey, Nineteen

   Be gentle with me, I'm from the nineteen-hundreds.

"Hey, nineteen

No, we can't dance together (We can't dance together)

No, we can't talk at all

Please take me along when you slide on down. . ."

—Steely Dan