Honoree – Ivy Baldwin

Ivy Baldwin

Honored 1969

Ivy Baldwin was a true dare-devil always seeking another adventure. Born William Ivy in 1866 he joined the circus at age 11 and learned to perform as a tight-rope walker. He later joined with performers Thomas and Sam Baldwin, and changed his name to Ivy Baldwin in order to be billed as “The Baldwin Brothers”.  He performed high wire acts and by 1890 he was making parachute jumps from balloons. A Baldwin parachute jump was included in the opening celebration of the original Elitch’s Gardens in 1890.

During his long career it is reported he had over 2,500 balloon ascensions and an amazing 2,500 parachute drops. Intently watching the Wright Brothers flying developments, he built copies of the Wright and Curtiss biplanes and survived, he claimed, nineteen crashes.

In 1894, the Army Signal Corps recruited Ivy to help develop their experimental observation balloon unit at nearby Fort Logan. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, a hot air balloon built by Baldwin was used to give U.S. troops the location of Spanish snipers before the Battle of San Juan Hill. The observation balloon experiment was short-lived as it was shot down on June 30, 1898.

Ivy Baldwin is credited as the first to fly a powered aircraft in Colorado when he made a short flight in a powered dirigible type balloon that he built himself. He is also credited with the first airplane take-off from water in Colorado when he flew a home built pusher airplane on floats from Sloan’s Lake in Denver in 1913.

Despite his significant aviation accomplishments, Baldwin was better known in Colorado for being a courageous, highly skilled tightrope walker. He was a prominent, headline performer for the Elitch’s Gardens amusement park for many summers, and he astonished the public by tightrope walking across the mouth of South Boulder Canyon and above the Eldorado Springs resort. Ivy Baldwin finally retired after his last tightrope walk across the canyon at age 82.