The territory covered by this volume differs
somewhat from that of the first edition, initially published
in 1986 by Wilderness Press, Berkeley. Inasmuch as my book <I>Yosemite Place
Names<D> covers
the names in Yosemite National Park, I have included in this book only the names of that
park that are
on its boundary with one of several national forests. The place names of the Lake Tahoe
Basin are covered
by the book <I>Tahoe Place Names<D> by Barbara Lekisch, which is also
published by Great West Books. T
hus I have not duplicated the names of that region, and do not include any names from the
range north of Lake Tahoe.
The US Board on Geographic Names has officially
defined the Sierra Nevada as extending from the gap
south of Lassen Peak, on the north, to Tehachapi Pass, on the south. The region covered by
this volume,
however, is limited on the north by roughly the northern boundary of Alpine County, on the
south by
Walker Pass and Lake Isabella, on the east by US 395 and the Nevada state line, and on the
west by
several things: elevation, major roads, permanent settlements, map boundaries, and the
author's arbitrary decisions.
None of the place names in the Sierra Nevada has
been handed down from antiquity. The names that we have come
to regard as fixed and permanent are of relatively recent origin. They are not eternal,
nor is there anything necessarily
correct or appropriate about them. Were we to begin anew to apply names to this mountain
range and to the multitude
of features in it, we would achieve a radically different result.
Pedro Font, viewing the range from a hilltop near
the present city of Antioch on an April day in 1776,
described it as <I>una gran sierra nevada<D><197>a grand snowy mountain
range<197>and that became
the name. The Spanish priests and soldiers named remarkably few features in the Sierra
Nevada. Their interest
in converting Indians to Christianity led them to explore the Central Valley and the
foothills of the Sierra. In the
course of these explorations they named the major westward-flowing rivers, such as the
Merced and the Tuolumne.
Other rivers originally named by the Spanish for saints or religious feast days were later
renamed by American
explorers (e.g., the Kern) or for a rebellious Indian (the Stanislaus), or were given
Indian names of questionable
authenticity and meaning (the Tule and the Kaweah). The Spanish had no interest in
exploring the mountains.
There were no converts to be had at high altitude, nor did the mountains offer anything
that could be transformed into wealth or articles of use.
No one has suggested that the Indians of any
tribe had a name for the entire mountain range, or that they named
the high peaks and major lakes. In only one limited area<197>Yosemite Valley and
vicinity<197>has a considerable
number of Indian names survived. Most of those names are mispronounced due to the
difficulties of phonetic spelling,
are applied to the wrong features because of the ignorance and arrogance of the white
namers, and have been subjected
to multiple interpretations. Many of the major features of Yosemite Valley were given
their present names during the
space of a few days in March and April of 1851 by Lafayette H. Bunnell and other members
of the Mariposa Battalion.
From 1861 to 1865 the members of the first
California Geological Survey (the Whitney Survey) engaged in the first spate
of naming based on need<197>the need for the names of identifiable features to place
on maps. Most of the objects of
their attention were mountains, which they named for one another and for prominent
geologists and other scientists of the time.
From the middle 1860s until about 1900, sheepmen
and cattlemen named meadows and streams as they took their flocks
and herds ever deeper into the mountains. Many a meadow became known by the name of the
sheepman who made it his summer camp.
Simultaneous with the sheepmen came the early
homesteaders. Seldom were meadows and creeks formally named for them:
the names simply came to be in common use by local people. When the first official maps
were made, the government surveyors
inquired locally about names, and accepted what was in use.
Theodore S. Solomons and Joseph N. LeConte were
the most prominent individual namers during the 1890s and early 1900s.
Various other Sierra Club members<197>especially Chester Versteeg<197>have
named numerous features since the club's founding in 1892.
From 1889 to 1914 the US Geological Survey
conducted the first comprehensive survey and mapping of the entire area covered
by this book, and published a series of 30-minute topographic maps on a scale of
1:125,000. Several hundred names appeared
for the first time. Some were names of common use, others were created by the surveyors
and cartographers who prepared the maps.
Foremost among the namers was Robert B. Marshall, who named peaks and lakes for family
members, friends, and their wives and daughters.
Packers contributed many names from about 1920
through 1950, often naming lakes for people or events on the occasions when they
stocked the lakes with fish. Dozens of lakes were given names during the 1940s and 1950s
by the California Department of Fish and Game.
Their need was the same as that of surveyors and cartographers: it is more convenient to
identify a lake or other feature by name rather
than to assign it a number.
There are hundreds of place names in the Sierra
Nevada whose origin is not known. They were created informally many years ago by
people who kept no written records. The sources of information I consulted are cited in
the individual entries. Of particular interest to
researchers are the records of the General Land Office at the Bureau of Land Management on
Cottage Way in Sacramento. These
homestead and patent documents, preserved on microfilm in the "control document
index" files, are records of when land left control
of the federal government. The "Lake Survey" reports of the Department of Fish
and Game in Fresno provided information on many
lake names, especially in Fresno County.
James T. Gardiner (Gardner) of the Whitney Survey
spelled his last name both ways at different times in his life (see <B>Gardiner,
Mount<D>).
I have used the spelling "Gardiner" throughout, except when it appears as
"Gardner" in quoted matter.
The US Geological Survey does not use periods,
apostrophes, or diacritical marks in names on topographic maps, lest they be
mistaken for other map symbols. Therefore some of the names in this volume do not have
apostrophes where they normally would be.
For many peaks and a few lakes, two elevations
are given. The first is in meters and the second is in feet. This is done only for the
maps that show metric contour lines. To convert meters to feet, multiply by 3.2808. To
convert feet to meters, multiply by 0.3048.
Francis P. Farquhar's 1926 <I>Place Names
of the High Sierra<D> provided the nucleus of this book. Without his pioneering
efforts,
the origin of many names in the Sierra Nevada would not be known. Marjory Farquhar allowed
me complete freedom to delve into the
files that her husband had accumulated over many years.
In preparing the first edition of this book I
received much generously given assistance and advice from many people: the staff of the
Bancroft Library in Berkeley; Barbara Lekisch at the Sierra Club library in San Francisco;
Ted Inouye, N. King Huber, and others at
the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park; June English of Fresno and Pat Stewart of Bishop,
historical researchers of the first order;
Heyward Moore of Fresno; Mary Vocelka and Linda Eade at the Yosemite National Park
research library; Bob Ehlers and Phil Pister,
California Department of Fish and Game; Mr. and Mrs. Art Schober, Round Valley,
California; Pam Conners, Stanislaus National Forest,
Sonora; Kathy Moffitt, Sierra National Forest, Fresno; and Rich Weaver, Inyo National
Forest, Bishop.
This new edition contains a significant number of
names from the Chester Versteeg Papers in the Bancroft Library, Berkeley.
Versteeg (1887<196>1963) was a climber and explorer who also collected a vast amount
of data on place names in the Sierra Nevada,
much of it by interviewing more than 350 early settlers and residents on both sides of the
Sierra. By doing so, he rescued from oblivion
the origin of many names that would otherwise have been lost to history. Mount Versteeg in
Sequoia National Park was named for Chester in 1964.
I have also received excellent assistance and
information from Jim Trombly, a former member of the California Advisory Board on
Geographic Names. Of his own volition, he devoted many hours to tracking down the elusive
and obscure<197>information gleaned
from those who had place-names facts in their heads but had never told anyone what they
knew.
I am eager to receive new information on Sierra
Nevada place names. If any reader can provide factual details on names not contained
in this book or additional information on the existing entries, or thinks that some of the
entries are incorrect, please write. Address your
letters to the author at the mailing address or the e-mail address on the copyright page.