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Sierra & Owens Valley Place Names

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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.

The Old John Jordan Trail Route

Casa Vieja Meadows
[photo - unknown]

Casa Vieja Meadows - old cabin
[photo - unknown]

Mineral Bath at Jordan Hot Springs
[Adam Pisoni photo]

The Story of the John Jordan Trail [pdf]

Naked Lady Meadow is a sizable meadow with a spring-fed marshy area supporting a grove of large aspen trees. On the trunk of one of the aspens a sheepherder had carved the image of a "naked lady."
[The information was reported in a letter from N. King Huber of the USGS who mapped the area in the late 1950s]

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 towards the summit of Mono Jim Peak.
[photo: unknown]

Looking down the slope of Mono Jim Peak.
[photo: unknown]

Mono Jim Peak (left) and Mt. Morrison (taller to the right).
[photo: unknown]

Right - Pywiack Cascade
[Brad & Katy Christie photo]

Pywiack Cascade and Pywiack Dome were called "Py-we-ack" by the Native Americans. "The north or Ten-ie-ya branch of the Merced River, which comes down the North Canon from the glistening rocks at its source, was called Py-we-ack, 'the river of glistening rocks,' or more literally, perhaps, 'the river-smoothed rocks.'" Pywiack Cascade had an earlier name of Slide Fall.
[Bunnell, Discovery, 1911]

Pioneer Basin was named by R. B. Marshall of the USGS during a 1907-09 survey for the Mt. Goddard 30' map, when he also named four peaks for the pioneer railroad builders, Crocker, Hopkins, Huntington, and Stanford.

[Top photo by Scott Toste]


	Pioneer Basin photos by Buck Forester

July 19, 1848: "Made only five or six miles and encamped at the spring near the fresh grave; determining to satisfy ourselves, it was soon opened. We were shocked at the sight. There lay the three murdered men robbed of every stitch of clothing, lying promiscuously in one hole about two feet deep.... The blood seemed fresh still oozing from their wounds."
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]

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

Mount Starr is named in honor of Walter A. Starr, Jr., a renowned mountain climber and author of Guide to the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra Region. Starr was killed in August 1933 while climbing in the Minarets.
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.'"

Regulation Peak and Regulation Creek were named after Lt. Harry C. Benson and a trumpeter named McBride who, in 1895, placed copies of Yosemite National Park regulations on trees throughout the park. McBride suggested the name "Regulation Peak" for a mountain between Smedberg Lake and Rodgers Lake. Benson put the name on his map of 1897. "Regulation Peak" was also called "Volunteer Peak" at one time and "Regulation Creek" was often called "West Fork Return Creek."

Graveyard Lakes
[Varrin Swearingen photo]

Heidi (Buck Forester's traveling companion) on the summit of Graveyard Peak
[Buck Forester photo]

Graveyard Peak ridge
[Varrin Swearingen photo]

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."

Background image courtesy of Buck Forester

	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

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This page was last updated on 25 August 2007