|
|
|
See USE NOTICE on Home Page. |
 Rae Lakes were named in 1906 by R. B. Marshall for Rachel ("Rae") Colby, wife of William E. Colby. In 1899 Bolton C. Brown named the southernmost lake for his wife - "Lake Lucy." |
 Ramshaw Meadows was named for Peter Ramshaw, a stockman in this region from 1861 to 1880. |
 |
|
Red and White Mountain
was named by Theodore S. Solomons in 1894. "The name has
gained a place in the maps, and it ispeculiarly descriptive
of the great peak of red slate fantastically streaked with seams
of white granite. The name identifies the mountain." [Sierra Club Bulletin - February 1903] |
|
 |
 Mt. Ritter (left)and Mt. Banner (right) (Photo - unknown) |
| Mount Ritter and the Ritter Range is named for the great German geographer and founder of the science of modern comparative geography - Karl Ritter (1779 - 1859). It was named by the Whitney Survey in 1864. Karl Ritter was a professor of history at the University of Berlin in the 1840s when Whitney was a student at the university. |
 |
 View east up Rock Creek drainage from the summit of Mt. Guyot. Mt. Langley is off in the left horizon and Olancha Peak to the right. [photo courtesy Yosemite Steve] |
 [photo courtesy Bob Steele] |
 |
Lake Sabrina was named for
Sabrina Hobbs, whose husband,Charles M. Hobbs, was the first
general manager of the Nevada California Power Company, which
dammed the lake during 1907-1908. |
 |
Shepherd Pass was named for John Shepherd. He was born in Illinois and came to California in 1852 and to Owens Valley in 1863. In 1873 he built a house 1/2 mile west of the Manzanar crossroads. It was said to be the first two-story frame dwelling in Owens Valley. |
 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. |
|
 Looking northeast across the Siberian Outpost from the pass leading over into Rocky Basin Lakes |
Sierra Nevada is Spanish for "snowy mountain range." Sierra is the word for "saw," and when used in this way means a jagged range of mountains - the teeth of the saw being similar to a row of mountain peaks. The Spanish used the name Sierra Nevada with abandon - any time they saw a mountain range with snow on it. As early as 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo gave that name to what we now know as the "Santa Lucia Range," south of Big Sur. Our present Sierra Nevada received its name from Fray Pedro Font, who saw it from a hill east of the contemporary town of Antioch in April 1776. "If we looked to the east we saw on the other side of the plain at a distance of some thirty leagues a great Sierra Nevada, white from the summit to the skirts, and running diagonally almost from south-southeast to north-northwest." [Francis P. Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada] I LOVE THE SIERRA NEVADA A video by David Wheat
|
 Theodore S. Solomons named Silver Creek in 1892 for its silvery appearance, and he later named the peak from the stream. The pass and the divide apparently were named by the USGS during the 1907-09 survey for the 1912 Mt. Goddard map. |
 Looking down from Silver Pass [Photo unknown) |
The name Sky Parlor Meadow apparently came into general use in the Sierra Club in the early 1920s. Before then, this meadow was called "Funston's Kaweah Meadow" on William R. Dudley's sketch map of 1898. |
 |
The first ascent of the mountain was on July 16, 1896, by Walter A. Starr, Sr. and Allen L. Chickering, who gave it a name of their own. "...a large cloud passed over us. Suddenly everything began to buzz like an electric car in motion. The camera tripod, our fingertips, and even our hair, which stood out straight, seemed to exude electricity. We were badly frightened, and got off the peak as rapidly as possible. We called this point 'Electric Peak.'" |
  Looking east over Taboose Pass (photo courtsey of Will H.) |
 |
Taboose Pass comes from the Piute Indian word "Taboose" which is a small edible groundnut found in Owens Valley. There was a "Taboose Ranch" about 12 miles north of Independence in the 1870s. Apparently the USGS surveyors borrowed the word for the pass and creek. Bolton C. Brown called the pass "Wide Gap" in July 1895 |
 Looking east over Taboose Pass (photo courtsey of Chris Ryerson) |
|
 Looking west over Taboose Pass - Arrow Peak in the back center and Bench Lake right below it. (photo courtsey of Chris Ryerson) |
|
 Templeton Meadows and mountain were named for Benjamin Stuart Templeton who ran sheep in the area from 1877 to 1885. |
Thunder and Lightning Lake was probably named by Halliday, a South Fork packer, who got caught in a storm while planting fish in the lake during the 1920s. |
 |
 Thunderbolt Peak was named by Francis P. Farquhar and sixothers when they made the first ascent of the mountain on August 13, 1931. "...shortly after the party reached the summit a violent thunderstorm drove all precipitately to a place of safety. So rapidly did the storm gather that Eichorn, last man to leave the ridge, was dangerously close to a lightning flash that appeared to strike the mountain. The importance of immediate retreat as soon as the rocks begin to 'sing' was strongly impressed upon the members of the party." [Sierra Club Bulletin, February 1932] [Scotty Strachan photo] |
 Thunderbolt Peak [photo: unknown] |
 Palisade Peaks [photo: unknown] |
 Thunderbolt Peak [photo: unknown] |
July 20, 1848: "We cut the following inscription on a balsam fir that stood near the grave: 'To the memory of Daniel Browett, Ezrah H. Allen, and Henderson Cox, who were supposed to have been murdered and buried by Indians on the twenty-seventh of June, A.D. 1848.' We called this place Tragedy Spring. Bigler, his companions, and the murdered men were members of the disbanded Mormon Battalion, on their way back to Great Salt Lake. [Erwin G. Gudde - Bigler's Chronicle of the West, 1962] |
|
 Tunnel airstrip (Photo courtesy of Ray DeLea)  |
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] |
Lt.
Davis used the name "Volcano Creek" on his 1896 map,
and called the nearby falls "Whitney Falls." On the
first edition of the Olancha 30' topographical map in
1907, the USGS named the creek "Golden Trout Creek"
and the falls "Volcanic Falls." In 1927 the falls was
officially named "Volcano Falls." Volcano Meadows,
Volcano Creek, and Volcano Falls all lie in the vicinity of two
extinct volcanoes and an enormous expanse of lava. Volcano Falls
actually lies on Golden Trout Creek just before the creek flows
down the Kern River gorge to meet the Kern River at lower Funston
Meadow. |
 |
 Golden Trout Creek chain of valcanoes |
|
 Golden Trout Creek volcano (Photo unknown) |
 Golden Trout Creek - Volcano Falls - off to the right Photo 2, Photo 3 (Photo courtesy Valerie Norton) |
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] |
 |
 Waterwheel Falls - Yosemite |
|
 |
 Ansel Adams |
 Mt. Whitney, the high peak on the right of the picture, was named in July 1864 by Clarence King and Richard Cotter of the Whitney Survey team in honor of Josiah Dwight Whitney. [photo courtesy Ansel Adams] |
|
RECOMMENDED READING |
 Spanish and Indian Place Names of California - Their Meaning and Their Romance by Nellie Van De Grift Sanchez, 1922 Place Names of the Sierra Nevada - From Abbot to Zumwalt by Peter Browning, 1986 Naming the Eastern Sierra - Dirty Sock to Bloody Canyon by Marguerite Sowaal, 1985 Place Names of the Sierra Nevada - From Abbot to Zumwalt by Francis P. Farquhar, 1926 The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States by Henry Ganett, 1902 ABE Books, making "out
of print" books easier to find. |
 |
Trans-Sierra Highway | |
|
|
Slim Randles "Night Ride" | |
|
|
Olancha | |
|
|
More
Sierra Place Names |
 |
|
George Brown, Native American |
|
|
|
To the Top of Mt. Whitney by Rena Moore |
|
  Sign Guestbook View Old Guest Book Entries Oct 1999 - Feb 2015 (MS Word) |
 CONTACT the Pigmy Packer |
 View Guestbook View Old Guest Book Entries Oct 1999 - Feb 2015 (PDF) |
This page was last updated on
12 August 2022