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Sierra &
Owens Valley Place Names
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The Sierra Nevada and Owens Valley are full of fascinating names
garnished over the centuries from Native Americans, trappers,
explorers, surveyors, geologists, packers, fisherman, frontiersman,
and settlers. These pages represent but a few of those names
and their origin. These are some of my favorite gathered from
my packing days with Mt. Whitney Pack Trains. These are names
which, for me personally, evoke wonderful Sierra and Owens Valley
memories - packers, camp fires, Sierra Club girls, nick names
such as Veggie, Manure Man, and Peek-a-Boo, mules with personality,
biting horses, Trail Riders of the Wilderness, countless trips
to the summit of Mt. Whitney, pack train wrecks, bronc shoeing
in the backcountry, rain at night in the Sierra, frozen tie lines,
loves lost and loves gained, and a host of majestic wilderness
scenes painted for all of us by the One Who seeks but to have
our hearts focused on Him.
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[right, photo
by Kim Lewis] |
 "After crossing Mono Pass, the
trail leads down Bloody Canyon - a terrible trail. You would
all pronounce it utterly inaccessible to horses, yet pack trains
come down, but the bones of several horses or mules and the stench
of another told that all had not passed safely.... It was a bold
man who first took a horse up there. The horses were so cut by
sharp rocks that they named it 'Bloody Canyon,' and it has held
the name - and it is appropriate - part of the way the rocks
in the trail are literally sprinkled with blood from the animals."
[William
Henry Brewer, Up and Down California in 1860-1864] |
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Mather
Pass was named for Stephen Tyng Mather (1867 - 1930), the first
director of the National Park Service, 1917 - 1929. Mather was
a reporter for the New York Sun and went to work for the
Pacific Coast Borax Company in 1893. He was largely responsible
for marketing packaged borax under the "Twenty-Mule Team
Borax" trade name. In 1903 he formed an independent borax
company which made him wealthy enough to purchase privately owned
lands within Sequoia National Park. He purchase the Tioga Road
in 1915 and donated it to the government.
[Sierra
Club Bulletin 1931] |
Palisades
from Mather Pass
[photo:
unknown] |
Upper Basin
from Mather Pass
[photo:
unknown] |
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The
Lake of the Fallen Moon was named by Frank Ernest Hill in 1921
in one of his romantic poems.
[Sierra
Club Bulletin 1923] |
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 Cloud Canyon and Cloud Creek were named
after William B. Wallace's mine which bears the same name, The
Cloud Mine, in 1924. William often referred to his mine as being
"up in the clouds." For a while, on some pre 1924 maps,
Cloud Canyon was mistakenly name Deadman Canyon which actually
was a few miles to the west. |
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 Ouzel
Creek was named in 1924 by David Starr Jordan for the brook which
flows from Mount Brewer into East Lake. The water-ouzel abounds
here, and it is said that John Muir's account of the water-ouzel,
one of the finest bird biographies ever written, was based largely
on observations made on this very stream. Jordan apparently went
wild naming everything ouzel - Ouzel Basin, Ouzel Pool, Ouzel
Camp etc. Fortunately it only stuck in Jordan's personal sketch
map.
[Sierra
Club Bulletin, January 1900] |
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Polemonium Peak is named after the Sky Pilot (Polemonium eximium)
flower. This flower typically grows only at altitudes above 12,000
feet on rocky ledges and slopes. Polemonium Peak is part of the
North Palisade complex of peaks. The picture to the right shows
Polemonium Peak [Left foreground], North Palisade [M], Starlight
Peak [R], Thunderbolt Peak [far R].
[photos:
unknown] |
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 Mount Guyot, Guyot Summit/Pass and Guyot
Flat were named by Captain J.W.A. Wright in 1881 in honor of
the Swiss geologist and geographer, Arnold Henri Guyot, whose
lectures for two years at Princeton, New Jersey, are among the
pleasantest recollections of his college days. Arnold was born
in Switzerland and came to America in 1848 where he taught physical
geography and geology at Princeton for nearly 30 years.
[photo
by Will Keightley] |
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Waterwheel
Falls, formerly Le Conte Falls and sometimes called
California Falls, was originally named in 1895 by R. M. Price
and derives its name from a set of cascades called the "Rocket
Cascades." Here the water strikes the edges of the great
plates of granite and is spun off continually in great arches.
The columns, or waterwheels, of water rise fifteen to 20 feet
high.
[Sierra
Club Bulletin, May 1895] [photo: unknown] |
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Guitar
Lake is said to have been named for its shape by Clarence King
in the 1870s.
[Mt.
Whitney Club Journal, May 1902]
(Right: Guitar Lake with the Kaweah's in the background) [photo:
unknown] |
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This name, Enchanted Gorge, was given in July 1895 by Theodore
S. Solomons to the gorge on Disappearing Creek, with its head
between Scylla and Charybdis. The Enchanted Gorge was so named
because of the many remarkable features it possesses, and the
weirdness of its scenery. |
(Left: Scylla
and Charybdis guarding the upper entrance to the Enchanted Gorge)
[David
Evan Roberts photo] |
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Tunnel Meadow
& airstrip [photo: Ray DeLea]
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Golden
Trout Creek and the South Fork of the Kern River come within
a few hundred feet of each other near a trail junction north
of the guard station. About 1883 or 1884 some enterprising South
Fork ranchers dug a diversion tunnel to take water from the creek
to irrigate the meadows lower down the river. The tunnel was
plagued by cave-ins, and was converted into an open cut about
1891. That too had a cave-in problem, and the project was abandoned
about 1899. Tunnel Meadow, Tunnel Air Camp (formerly owned and
operated by Bob White out of Lone Pine, and Tunnel Guard Station
all garnish their name from those 1800s ranchers.
[Los Tulares, August 1984] |
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J.
N. LeConte crossed Siberian Pass in 1890, before it was named.
"The summit (Siberian Outpost) was an immense flat area
covered with loose slabs of granite piled on top of one another
in sharp pinnacles. Many dead pines stood around. Still more
lay prostrate, all barkless, limbless, and bleached by the winds
and snow, but not a living tree in sight." The name "Siberian
Outpost" was given in 1895 by Harvey Corbett, for the area's
bleak appearance.
[Right:
photo courtesy Sierra
Trails] |
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Background
photograph courtesy of Patitucciphoto.
Here are a couple examples of Patitucci's wonderful photos. |
Palisade Glacier |
Mt. Mendel |
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Books
on Sierra and Owens Valley Place Names |
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Fr.
John J. Crowley |
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Trans-Sierra
Highway |
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Slim
Randles "Night Ride" |
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Olancha |
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More
Sierra Names |
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George
Brown, Native American |
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To
the Top of Mt. Whitney by Rena Moore |
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 This page was last updated on
25 August 2007 |
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| Copper Pass, Sawtooth
Pass, Benson Pass, Morgan Pass, Bishop Pass, Junction Pass, Kaweah
Gap, Buckeye Pass, Burro Pass, Colby Pass, Emigrant Pass, Cottonwood
Pass, Avalanche Pass, Timber Gap, Forester Pass, Italy Pass,
Mather Pass, Muir Pass, Mulkey Pass, Pine Creek Pass, Trail Crest,
Olancha Pass, Siberian Pass, Taboose Pass, Piute Pass, Lucys
Foot Pass, Mono Pass, Jigsaw Pass, Pinchot Pass, Scepter Pass,
Silver Pass, Selden Pass |