Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633

Sale 2633 - Lot 172

Price Realized: $ 406
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(WEST--ARIZONA.) Joseph Christmas Ives. Report upon the Colorado River of the West. 4 folding maps, 34 plates (8 of them colored), text illustrations. 131, 14, 154, 6, 30, 6, 31, [1] pages. 4to, contemporary gilt pictorial cloth, tastefully restored with modern rebacking; 4-inch tape repair to map 1, pages 81-88 (third section) bound out of sequence, without the two duplicate folding maps usually found in the Senate issue. 36th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Ex. Doc. Washington, 1861
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Ives and his party were the first to map the Grand Canyon, which he famously described here as "altogether valueless": "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. It seems intended by nature that the Colorado, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed" (page 110).

The site of the present South Rim visitor center, which draws millions of visitors every year, is in the center of map #2, just above the words "Colorado Plateau." Howes I-92; Sabin 35308; Wagner-Camp 375; Wheat, Transmississippi West, pages IV:95-101.