|
|
Sierra Nevada &
Owens Valley Place Names: G - M
Sequoia National Forest & Sierra National Forest maps courtesy of Greg Farris |
See USE NOTICE on Home Page
Photo text (unless otherwise noted) is from
Place Names of the Sierra Nevada by Peter Browning |
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.
|
|
|
The
USGS named that creek that flows from Big Whitney Meadows south
through Groundhog Meadows and Little Whitney Meadows, Golden
Trout Creek in 1905. The creek is so named for the proliferation
of Golden Trout in the creek. The creek was
first called "Whitney Creek" because it source was
thought to be near Mt. Whitney (actually Mt. Langley) when Clarence
King climbed it (Mt. Langley) in 1871.
[Joseph
N. LeConte, A summer of Travel in the High Sierra]
[Golden Trout images below courtesy troutesite.com] |
|
Gilbert Golden
Trout
|
South Fork Kern
Golden Trout |
Little Kern
Golden Trout |
Volcano Creek
Golden Trout |
Graveyard
Peak, Graveyard Meadows, and Graveyard Lakes were named as the
result of "some Portuguese sheepmen [who] operated like
a gypsy outfit, refusing to recognize the agreed-upon boundaries
of the various sheep ranges. The other sheepherders tried to
drive them out, but without success. They [the Portuguese] were
shot in the back while cooking their supper in camp."
[Inyo National Forest archives]
|
|
Heidi (Buck
Forester's traveling companion) on the summit of
Graveyard Peak
[Photo courtesy of Buck
Forester]
|
Graveyard Peak
[Photo courtesy of Byron Hetrick]
|
Graveyard Lakes
[Photo courtesy of Byron Hetrick] |
03/24
Named in 1932 for its green-colored rocks
[Inyo National Forest] |
|
03/24
|
John Hawkins was an early owner of the hot springs.
Alvin M. Grover bought a half interest in the property in 1878, and later acquired it all.
[Alpine Heritage] |
|
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) |
|
Harrison
Pass, or Harrison's Pass as it was formerly called, is named
after Ben Harrison a local sheep-herder in the 1880s. Ben was
part Cherokee Indian and he built a monument on the pass. The
pass was probably used by sheep-herders in 1875 or 1876. Bolton
C. Brown of the Sierra Club (May 1897 Sierra Club Bulletin)
said the pass would never be popular until a windlas and cable
were put at the head of the pass.
[Sequoia National Park; Sierra Club Bulletin - 1896] |
Harrison Pass
[Photo courtesy of ASRSF] |
Harrison Pass
(foreground)
[Photo courtesy of Tom
Becht] |
Hell For Sure Pass and Lake were named by J. N. LeConte. He crossed the pass in 1904 on what had been called the "Baird" trail. The lake was first named on the Mt. Goddard map in 1953.
[Sierra Club Bulletin - 1905] |
|
Hell For Sure Pass (almost center in background)
[Photo by Dave Coppedge) |
|
03/24
William Helm, born in Ontario, Canada, in 1837, came to California in 1859 and "settled near Big Dry Creek, about seven miles northeast of the site of the present town of Fresno." Helm and Frank Dusy were partners in sheep-raising in the lat 1860s and early '70s.
[Sierra National Forest]
|
|
|
Helms Meadow and Courtright Reservoir
(Photo courtesy of Ben Zastovnik] |
03/24
|
On September 7, 1881, the Rev. F.H. Wales of Tulare climbed Mount Young, where he built a monument and left a record of its name, "and the name of another handsome peaks just south of it, which, from his sugestion, was named Mount Hitchcock, for Professor Charles Hitchcock, of Dartmouth, where Mr. Wales spent his college days."
Charles Henry Hitchcock (1836-1919), professor of geology at Dartmouth, 1868-1908, conducted the first high mountain observatory in the US, on Mount Washington, NH. Hitchcock Lakes were originally (1907) called "Twin Lakes" and changed to Hitchcock Lakes in 1933."
[W.W. Elliott & Co. - A Gide to the grand and sublime scenery of the Sierra Nevada in the region about Mount Whitney - 1883]
|
Mount Hitchcock, Hitchcock Lakes, ad Guitar Lake
[Photo courtesy of Robert O'Dell) |
03/24
John Benamin Hockett (1828-1898), born in Arkansas, pioneered in Tulare County in 1849. He is noted for building (1862-64) the "Hockett Trail," from the South Fork of the Kaweah River across the mountains to Lone Pine.
Hockett Meadows was amed in 1869 by Ira Blossom.
(More Hockett Trail information)
[Sequoia National Park files ] |
|
|
03/24
|
Major William Burchell Hooper *1836-1903), a native of Virginia; at one time owned the Occidental Hotel in San Francisco. The mountain and the creek were named by R.B Marshall, USGS, probably during the 1907-09 survey for the Mt. Goddard map
[Heyward Moore - Fresno, Past and Present - 1984] |
Mount Hooper
[Photo courtesy of Tom Hilton) |
03/24
Mammoth Creek, which flows through the town of Mammoth Lakes, changes its name to Hot Creek in Hot Creek Gorge where it intersects a series of faults that provide pathways to the surface for heated (geothermal) water flowing in an aquifer several hundred feet beneath the surface.
[USGS] |
|
|
Hot Creek
[Photo courtesy of 45SURF) |
|
|
Humphreys
Basin, Humphreys Lakes, and Mount Humphreys were named for Andrew
Atkinson Humphreys (1810-1883), soldier and engineer, the grandson
of Joshua Humphreys, who designed the "Constitution"
and other frigates of the War of 1812. Humphreys distinguished
himself in the Civil War. After the war he was chief engineer
of the U.S. Army until he retired in 1879. "The
summit of Mount Humphreys is not more than eight feet square....
It is one mass of cracked and broken blocks, thrown loosely together
in such a way as to warn one to move cautiously lest the whole
top should break off and fall into the great abyss to the eastward....
Probably no one had ever stood where we then were, unless perhaps
during the early Jurassic period, before the mountain was fully
sculptured.
[Sierra
Club Bulletin - January 1905]. |
|
03/24
|
N.B. Hunewill built two sawmills on Buckeye Creek in the 1860s. He was one of the earliest settlers in the Bridgeport region; he homesteaded 160 acres in sections 13 and 14 T 4 N., R. 24 E in 1876. The "Hunewill Ranch" is now the Circle H. Guest Ranch. The name of the peak was misspelled "Hennerville" on all the editions of the Bridgeport map from 1911 through 1951, The mistake apparently was due to a General Land Office surveryor in 1877.
[Government Land Office] |
|
03/24
|
The lake is fed by a small glacier and a permanent snowfield, and often has ice floating in it until late summer. It probably was named by Ansel F. Hall and Al Solinski during an exploring expedition in 1922.
[Yosemite National Park files] |
Iceberg Lake
[Photo courtesy of Ed Cisnalis) |
03/24
Illilouette Fall, with Half Dome in the back.
[Photo courtesy of Robert Cross) |
|
Tululowehuck, The canon of the South Fork of the Merced, called the Illilouette in the California geological report.
The canon is called by Professor J.D. Whitney the "Illilouette," a supposed Indian name but I have never questioned a single Indian that knew anything whatever of such a word while every one, wthout exception, knows the canon either by Too-lool-a-we-ack or Too-lool-we-ack; the meaning of which as nearly as their ideas can be comprehended and interpreted is the place beyond which was the great rendezvous of the Yo Semite Indians for hunting deer.
(Hutchings, In the Heart)
[Josiah Dwight Whitney - The Yosemite Guide-Book - 1870]
|
03/24
Lt. N.F. McClure named the pass in 1895 for the native Norwegian in his command who discovered it while they were exploring for a route from the Merced River to the Minarets region. The peak and lakes were later named from the pass.
[Yosemite National Park] |
|
|
03/24
Lake Italy was named by the USGS during the 1907-09 survey for the Mt. Goddard map, because of a vague resemblance to the shape of italy, which became apparent when it was drawn on the map.
[Farquar: Marshall] |
Lake Italy
[photo courtesy of Wikipedia] |
|
|
Jack
Main Canyon was named after an old sheep-herder who ranged sheep
in the region. The herder's name was actually Jack Means. C.H.
Burt said that the name of the canyon as it appears on maps today
is incorrect. All of the early sheep and cattle men in the region
called the canyon "Jack Means Canyon" and the present
name is a corruption of that name.
[Sierra
Club Bulletin - 1925] |
03/24
|
The butte/rock overshodowing the meadow bears the mellifuous title of "Jackass Dome." This dome is perhaps over 10,000 feet high lends its majestic name to the extensive meadow by the same name. Through the meadow meanders a wide and quiet stream . . . and to this stream the same aristocratic title has been assigned.
[J.W.A. Wright - San Francisco Post, 1869] |
Jack
Main Canyon was named after an old sheep-herder who rasent
name is a corruption of that
|
Jackass Meadow & Jackass Dome
[Photo courtesy of Eli Gross] |
Jackass Meadow & Jackass Dome
[Photo courtesy of Eli Gross] |
|
The idea of a crest-parallel
trail through the High Sierra came to me one day while herding
my uncle's cattle in an immense unfenced alfalfa field near Fresno.
It was in 1884 and I was fourteen." (Theodore S. Solomons
- Sierra Club Bulletin, April 1938). "Sleeping that night
[in 1895] at the base of Mt. Huxley, warmed by our fire of gnarled
juniper, I dreamed of my task fully done. A well-marked trail
led from the distant Yosemite past the long lake, up the snow-basin,
and over the divide to the King's River. I hope my dream was
prophetic. The way, at all events, is clear. Only the trail waits
to be built." (Solomons) The "long lake" and the
"divide" were Wanda Lake and Muir Pass, which were
not named until about 1907.
Solomons did the earliest explorations for what later became
the John Muir Trail. J.N. LeConte continued the search for the
best route. In 1915 the California legislature, in response to
a Sierra Club proposal, made an initial appropriation of $10,000
for construction of the trail, which was to be named for John
Muir, who had died in December 1914. The John Muir Trail as it
exists today was completed when the sections were built over
Forester Pass in 1931 and Mather Pass in 1938.
|
John Muir Trail photos courtesy of John Pelltier
(Visit John's website and see his mile by mile photo journal of the entire John Muir Trail)
|
Lyell Canyon |
South of Island Pass |
Red Cinder Cone near Reds Meadow |
Heading south from Duck Pass |
Evolution Lake |
Le Conte Canyon |
The Golden Staircase |
Upper Basin |
Fin Dome |
The Bighorn Plateau |
Hitchcock Lakes (L) and Guitar Lake (R) |
Smthosonean High Altitude Observatory on the summit of Mt. Whitney |
|
The
Old John Jordan Trail
This historic trail is a segment of one of the pioneer routes
across the central Sierra. John Jordan was rancher down in the
Yokohl Valley when gold was discovered in the Kern Canyon and
out in the desert near Aurora and Bodie. He laid out the route
and secured a permit to build a toll road across the mountains
to the mining camps. He and his sons built this trail which went
all the way across to Lone Pine, past Jordan Hot Springs (named
in his honor). Tragedy struck at the Kern River crossing, where
he drowned. His toll road was never completed.
|
|
Jordan Hot Springs
[photo
courtesy of Greg Ferris - 1971]
|
Mineral Bath
at Jordan Hot Springs
[Photo courtesy of William Reavis]
|
Casa Vieja Meadow on the trail to Jordan Hot Springs
[Photo courtesy of Donald Guidebus] |
03/24
Alfred H. and Myrtle Prater, who in 1928 made the first ascent, chose the name becase of the peak's proximity to Lake Italy.
[Inyo National Forest]
|
|
|
The
Lake of the Fallen Moon was named by Frank Ernest Hill in 1921
in one of his romantic poems.
[Sierra
Club Bulletin 1923] |
The
Lake of the Fallen Moon
[photo courtesy of JFR] |
|
The Lake of the Lone Indian was named
by J. S. and Lincoln Hutchinson and party in 1902. "The
name was suggested to us by the very distinct profile of an Indian's
face and feathery head-gear in the mountain south of the lake.
[Sierra
Club Bulletin, 1903]
|
Lake of the Lone Indian
[Photo courtesy of Dale Matson] |
Lake of the Lone Indian trail sign.
[Photo courtesy of Dale Matson] |
03/24
Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck (1744-1829), a French pre-Darwinian evolutionist who espoused the theory that characteristics developed by use or habit or environmental change may be inherited. The peak was named to agree with the six peaks of the "Evolution Group" named by Theodores S. Solomons in 1895. The name was almost certainly applied by the USGS during the 1907-09 survey for the Mt. Goddard map.
|
|
03/24
|
Leroy Vining and a few chosen companions, with one of Moore's scouts as guide, went over the Sierra to the place where the gold had been found in 1852, and established themselves on what has since been know as Vining's Gulch or Creek. In the early 1860s Vining built a sawmill on the creek now named for him, and sold lumber in Aurora, NV.
Sometime later, Vining came to a peculiar end. "At that time the crowd of miners and gamblers used to congregate at the Exchange Saloon in Aurora, where frequent shooting-scrapes would occur. Whenever trouble started everyone would get out of the room. On one of these occasions a gun went off in the crowd and Lee Vining went out the door ... and started up the street toward the Odd Fellows Hall. Shortly after someone found him lying on the walk dead, an upon examination it was found that the pistol had gone off in his pocket, shooting him in the groin, from which he had bled to death.
[Sierra
Club Bulletin 1928]
|
|
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] |
Palisade Lakes looking north
from Mather Pass
[photo courtesy of Peter Burke]
|
|
Upper Basin and Split Mountain looking south from Mather Pass
[photo courtesy of Peter Burke] |
03/24
The three McGee brothers, Alney, John, and Bart were pioneer cattlemen in Mono and Inyo counties. McGee Creek was name for Alney Lee McGee. All other "McGee" names probably are derived from the creek.
[Inyo National Forest] |
|
McGee Canyon
[photo courtsey of Ed Cisnalis]
|
03/24
|
Felix Meysan came to Lone Pine with his family in 1869, when he was four years old. His father, Charles, born in France, had a general merchandise store in Lone Pine. Felix stocked the Meysan Lakes with fish in the 1920s.Creek
[Saga of Inyo County]
|
|
03/24
|
This was a name suggested by Chester Versteeg in the 1930s because the mountain's shape looks like a bishop's heeaddress.
[Sierra Club Papers]
|
|
|
Monache Creek and Monache Meadows are the remnant names of a
failed attempt by the citizens of Owens Valley in 1864 to create
a new county south of Mono County. They wanted to name the new
county, Monache County in honor of the Monachi Indians.
[Walter
Chalfant, The Story of Inyo] [photo: unknown] |
|
|
|
Mono
Jim Peak is named after a native Paiute guide, who along with
Robert Morrison was killed near Convict Lake during a fight with
escaped convicts from the Nevada State Penitentiary. |
Looking down
the slope of Mono Jim Peak towards Convict Lake.
[Photo courtesy of A. J. Kaufman]
|
Mono Jim Peak
(left) and Mt. Morrison (taller to the right).
[Photo courtesy of noondueler]
|
Mono County and Mono Lake are named after a wide-spread division of Shoshonean Indians on both slopes of the Southern Sierra Nevada. By their Yokuts neighbors they are called Monachi. The Yokuts word for "flies" was monoi, monai or monoyi." If we assume that this word forms the stem of monachi, it is quite certain that the name means "fly-people" and is quite properly applied. On the sore of the otherwise barren lake are found countless millions of the pupae of a fly. These pupae were not only the favorite food of these Indians, but they used them for trading with the neighboring tribes. The conclusion is that the Yokuts called these Indians Monachi because their wealth consisted of flies. The worms are dried in the sun, the shell rubbed off, when a yellowish kernel remains, like a small yellow grain of rice.
The first use of the word as a geographic name was by Lt. Tredwell Moores party in July 1852, calling the lake "Lake Mono" after the local Indian tribe.
[Alfred Lous Kroeber - California Place Names of Indian Origin - 1916] |
|
Mono Lake
[Photo courtesy of Dave Toussain] |
Moraine Lake was named in July 1897. William R. Dudley said it was formed in the bowl of a great, gravelly, porous moraine, hence the name we gave it seemed particularly appropriate.
[Sierra Club Bulletin - 1903] |
|
|
03/24
|
Robert Morrison, a member of a posse pursuing escaped convicts, was killed by one of them near Convict Lake on September 24, 1871
[W. A. Chalfant - The Story of Inyo] |
|
Further Reading
This is perhaps the most fascinating book you can read about
construction of the John Muir Trail
"Pathway in the Sky: The Story of the John Muir Trail" by Hal Roth 1965
ABE Books, making "out
of print" books easier to find.
|
|