Explorer (sternwheeler)
Explorer was a small, custom-made stern-wheel steamboat built for Second lieutenant Joseph Christmas Ives and used by him to carry the U. S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers expedition to explore the Colorado River above Fort Yuma in 1858. History. After inquiring about the cost of chartering one of the Colorado River steamboats of George Alonzo Johnson and finding their rates too high, Lt. Ives ordered a steamboat built in 1857: After being transported by the Panama Railroad across the Isthmus to the Pacific Ocean, the "Explorer" was shipped again by steamship from Panama City up  to San Francisco. From there expedition sailed with the parts of the steamboat on the deck of the schooner "Monterey" to the Colorado River Delta where it arrived November 30. There Ives oversaw its reassembly and launch on December 30, 1857, at Robinson's Landing, Baja California. David C. Robinson, owner of the landing and a pilot for George Alonzo Johnson, was made captain of the boat. After Ives used the "Explorer" to ascend the Colorado River, he sent it back to Fort Yuma with Richardson. There it was put up for auction and sold to George A. Johnson for  $1000. He had its engine and paddle wheel removed and used it for a barge to carry firewood to steamboat landings. In 1864 it broke free from it moorings at Pilot Knob and was carried away 60 miles down river into the Delta where it sank in a slough, sometimes seen by passing steamers, until the river moved away from the location and it was hidden by the delta foliage and lost. Its wreck was found in 1929, by a survey party, in a dried up slough miles away from the new course of the river. A mere skeleton  remained, its iron plates long ago removed to make comales for baking tortillas.