The Canyon of Diamond Creek.
Photograph by W.H. JACKSON.
The steamboat was now sent back to the fort and Ives prepared for a land journey, which led him eastward over much the same route that Garces had traversed so long ago on his march to Oraibi. Ireteba was his guide. They went to the mouth of Diamond Creek, where they had their first view of the Grand Canyon, or Big Canyon, as they called it, of which Ireteba had before given them some description. The illustrations given in Ives’s report of both Black and Grand Canyons are a libel on these magnificent wonder-places, and in no way compare with the lieutenant’s admirable pen-pictures. Crossing the Colorado Plateau (which another explorer ten or twelve years later claims the honour of naming, forgetting that Ives uses the name in his report), they visited the Havasupai in their deep canyon home, just as Garces had done, and then proceeded to the towns of the Moki. Ives was deeply impressed by the repellant nature of the great canyon and the surroundings, and remarks: “It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed.” Late in the same year that Lieutenant Ives made his interesting and valuable exploration, another military post was established on the Colorado, and called Fort Mohave, just about where the California line intersects the stream. Lower down, Colorado City had been laid out several years before (1854) under amusing circumstances. The Yuma ferry at that time was operated by a German, thrifty after his kind, and on the lookout for a “good thing.” A party of indigent prospectors, returning from the survey of a mine in Mexico, reached the Arizona bank with no money to pay for the crossing, and hit upon the ingenious plan of surveying a town site here and trading lots to the German for a passage. Boldly commencing operations, the sight of the work going on soon brought the ferryman over to investigate, and when he saw the map under construction he fell headlong into the scheme, which would, as they assured him, necessitate a steam ferry.[[3]] The result was the immediate sale of a portion of the town to him and the exchange of a lot for the necessary transportation to the opposite bank. Afterwards, these parties did what they could to establish the reality of the project, but up to date it has not been noted as a metropolis, and the floods of 1861-2 undermined its feeble strength. Another name for it was Arizona City.
[3] Across America and Asia, by Raphael Pumpelly, p. 60. The portion of this admirable work relating to the vicinity of the Colorado River will be found of great interest in this connection.
Fort Yuma and the Old Railway Bridge of the Southern Pacific.
Photograph by C.R. SAVAGE.
The year following the Ives expedition, Captain Macomb (1859) was sent to examine the junction of the Green and Grand rivers. For a considerable distance he followed, from Santa Fé, almost the same trail that Escalante had travelled eighty-three years previously. Dr. Newberry, the eminent geologist who had been with Ives, was one of this party, and he has given an interesting account of the journey. The region lying immediately around the place they had set out for is one of the most formidable in all the valley of the Colorado. Looking about one there, from the summit of the canyon walls, it seems an impossibility for anything without the power of flight to approach the spot except by way of the river channels. Macomb and Newberry succeeded in forcing their way to within about six miles of the junction, there to be completely baffled and turned back. Arriving finally at the brink of the canyon of Grand River, Newberry says:
“On every side we were surrounded by columns, pinnacles, and castles of fantastic shapes, which limited our view, and by impassable canons, which restricted our movements. South of us, about a mile distant, rose one of the castle-like buttes, which I have mentioned, and to which, though with difficulty, we made our way. This butte was composed of alternate layers of chocolate-colored sandstone and shale about one thousand feet in height; its sides nearly perpendicular, but most curiously ornamented with columns and pilasters, porticos and colonnades, cornices and battlements, flanked here and there with tall outstanding towers, and crowned with spires so slender that it seemed as though a breath of air would suffice to topple them from their foundations. To accomplish the object for which we had come so far, it seemed necessary that we should ascend this butte. The day was perfectly clear and intensely hot, the mercury standing at 92 degrees in the shade, and the red sandstone, out of which the landscape was carved, glowed in the heat of the burning sunshine. Stripping off nearly all our clothing, we made the attempt, and, after two hours of most arduous labor, succeeded in reaching the summit. The view which there burst upon us was such as amply repaid us for all our toil. It baffles description.”