[1] His mother was Cynthia Darragh, whose great grandfather was John Hart, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
[7][8][a] Adams claimed that during the exploration, he found a place he called "Paradise Valley" that had fields of grain seven feet high; that he had found gold, copper, lead, and silver; and that the Colorado River was freely navigable for 600 miles from its mouth.
[8] Adams struggled for over ten years to impose his view of the Colorado River - that it was a mineral paradise shot through with veins of gold and silver - but ultimately failed.
In 1878, Senator Francis Cockrell rejected a resolution that would have compensated Adams for his spontaneous work.
[citation needed] Adams' survey, while wildly off the mark and generally recognized as unscientific, was a notable moment in the exploration of the West.
In his resistance to fact and logic he had many allies who were neither so foolish in their folly nor so witless in their rascality as he, but whose justification and platform was the same incorrigible insistence upon a West that did not exist.