Augustus Le Plongeon (1825-1908) was a French surveyor who laid out the site of Marysville in 1851. He later became better known elsewhere as a photographer, antiquarian, and amateur archaeologist.
Born on the island of Jersey and educated in Paris, France, Le Plongeon sailed to San Francisco in 1849 to work as a surveyor in the Gold Rush. He also apprenticed to become a doctor of medicine. In 1851, as soon as he completed his layout of Marysville, he moved to England and studied photography. He returned to San Francisco in 1855 to open a daguerreotype portrait studio on Clay Street, but in 1862 he left for Lima, Peru, where he opened another photography studio and also an "electro-hydropathic" medical clinic, eventually making his name primarily through his archaeological photographs of Mayan artifacts.
In 1870-1871, he traveled to San Francisco, New York City, and London to conduct lectures and research on Mayan civilization based on his discoveries in Peru. While in London, he met and married Alice Dixon, who became his archaeological and photographic collaborator for the rest of his life. The couple traveled to Yucatán in 1873 and continued the archaeological investigation into Mayan civilization there until the mid-1880s, when they settled in Brooklyn, New York. Augustus died in Brooklyn in 1908, at the age of 83. Alice died there two years later, at the age of 59.
