Tahoe Place Names
Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Reference Map
Tahoe Place Names
Appendix 1. Old Names
Appendix 2. Diary of Charles Preuss,
January 15 to February 28, 1844
Illustration Sources
Bibliography
Addenda
Illustrations
Balancing
Rock
Washoes camped at Lakeside
Joseph and Ernest John Pomin
Kit Carson
Totem poles in the movie Rose Marie
Cave Rock
George H. Goddard
W. W. Price atop Dicks Peak
Eagle Rock
Fallen Leaf Lake Lodge
Fannette Island
Floating Island Lake
Gilman N. Folsom
Glen Alpine social hall
Sawmills at Glenbrook
Crocker home at Idlewild
Incline
Augustus W. Pray
Steamer Governor Stanford
McKinney's
Sign on Maggies Peaks
Seneca Hunt Marlette
Charles Preuss
Sierra House
Spooner's Station, 1889
Montgomery Meigs Macomb
Fremont-Preuss map, 1845
Fremont-Preuss map, 1848
Bartlett's map, 1854
Goddard's map, 1857
De Groot's map, 1860
De Groot's map, 1863
Bancroft's map, 1863
Tahoe City, 1865
Grand Central Hotel, Tahoe City
Tallac House
“Snowshoe” Thompson
Vikingsholm
West shore, near Tahoe Tavern
Barbara Lekisch's experience as a librarian shows in her skillful handling of the nomenclature of the Lake Tahoe Basin. She has created a splendid dictionary—no, an encyclopedia, such is its wonderful detail—of the place names around Lake Tahoe and up to the crest of the surrounding mountains.
Each entry is located not only in its California or Nevada county, but also on its Forest Service or Geological Survey quadrangle map. When possible, each name is also located on important historical maps, such as those of George H. Goddard, the State Geological Survey of California, and the Wheeler Survey. The "definitions" of the place names are enhanced by interesting quotations from early visitors to the scene, often the very namers themselves. These quotes are so well-chosen that Tahoe Place Names is not merely a handbook for knapsack or glove compartment (and, of course, a library reference work), but is also a book that is fun to read. The description of Snowshoe Thompson's feats in the Thompson Peak entry, and the discussion of the long-running controversy over whether Lake Tahoe should be named Bonpland, Bigler, or Tahoe are excellent historical and biographical sketches in themselves.
The author, wisely, does not cling tightly to what we might call “tidewater Tahoe.” She covers important locations at some distance from the lakeshore if they are geographically or historically related. Some examples are Daggett Pass, Kingsbury Grade, and Genoa; The Dardanelles near Sonora Pass; and Red Lake near Carson Pass.
This book is as much about Tahoe Basin and Sierra Nevada biography as it is about history, geography, and natural history. Lekisch does not skimp on the human landscape of roads and resorts, in addition to streams, peaks, and passes. She describes landmarks from the viewpoint of early Washoe Indians before taking up the observations of explorers, cartographers, squatters, and tourists.
Tahoe has been a sort of Newport-in-the-Ponderosas for San Francisco's elite of wealth and power. The list of summer residents reads like The City's social register: DeYoung, Baldwin, Pope, Holladay, Mills, Sharon, Ralston, Dollar, Lick, Crocker, Hellman, Tevis, Fleischhacker. But even more interesting are such little-known denizens of the fabled "mountain sea" region as Captain Dick Barter, the hermit of Emerald Bay; pioneer resort owner John McKinney; and Mickey Free the bandit.
It is apparent that Lekisch has studied maps, both old and new, as well as whole shelves of documents and books—including old county histories and dusty great registers of voters—not to mention dizzying reels of microfilmed newspapers. The research must have been a prodigious, albeit rewarding, task of historical, bibliographical, and cartographic detective work.
Thanks to this fine effort, we can add the name Lekisch to the roster of place names scholars such as Gudde, Stewart, Farquhar, and Browning. The story of Lake Tahoe is here too, in and between the lines. Simply browsing in this volume will make it clear to the reader why Professor Joseph LeConte wrote, many years ago: —I could dream away my life here with those I love. . . . Of all the places I have yet seen, this is the one which I could longest enjoy and love the most.”
Richard H. Dillon
Preface
My interest in Tahoe place names began when I was hiking with a friend in Desolation Wilderness, and first saw “Jabu,” a tiny, exquisite lake near Cracked Crag. “Jabu” remained a mystery until I became the librarian at the Sierra Club in San Francisco. A Sierra Club Library volunteer and long-term member, Harriet T. Parsons, inquired for me through Marjorie Bridge Farquhar and Haven Jorgensen, both of whom have spent many summers at Echo Lake. From them I learned that the name is a composite using the first two letters of a man's first and last names (see Jabu).
Francis Bacon wrote: “Name, though it seem but a superficial and outward matter, yet it carrieth much impression and enchantment.” Finding Jabu Lake and then the meaning of its name led to many years of enjoyable activity. I began the Tahoe place names project so that my young daughter, Hallie, and I could sit together evenings doing our homework. The project led me to a six-year-long job at the Sierra Club's William E. Colby Memorial Library. I would go there on my lunch break from the Mechanics' Institute Library in search of names information, and eventually I applied for the job of librarian.
My sincere thanks go to those who encouraged and assisted me in the completion of the project, which began ten years ago. At the top of the list is Peter Browning, editor and publisher, whose extensive assistance makes him a veritable co-author. The many others who helped are Bern Kreissman, who located books and photographs, and provided helpful criticism; Douglas H. Strong, who encouraged me to begin and who later read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions; photographers Jim Hildinger, Linda Anne Mainville, Eslie Cann, Philip Adam, and Robert McKimmie; artist Claus Sievert; Monica Clyde, Helmi Nock, and Hans Hollitscher for their translation of the Preuss diary from the German; Ted Inouye and Dick Reich of the US Geological Survey; Jim Ryan of the California Department of Fish and Game; and Lorene and Philip Greuner. I am grateful to the University of California Press for permission to use a few passages from the book Up and Down California in 1860–1864, the Journal of William H. Brewer. I also wish to thank the many helpful librarians at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, the Bancroft Library, the California State Library California Room, the California Historical Society Library, the Nevada Historical Society Library, Sonoma State University Library, the Sierra Club Colby Library, the Wells Fargo History Room, and the Marin County Library, Anne T. Kent California Room.
I invite the reader to send me additional information, which I will collect for an eventual second edition. Address your letters to the author in care of Great West Books, P.O. Box 1028, Lafayette, CA 94549.
Introduction
The Lake Tahoe Basin is officially designated as the land inside the ridgeline of the mountains encircling the lake. (See the reference map on page xviii.) Only the names within the Lake Tahoe Basin are included in this work. The source of the place names is the United States Geological Survey, which mapped, edited, and published the 7.5' quadrangle maps between 1955 and 1973. In 1976 the US Forest Service Geometric Service Center prepared the quad maps for the US Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. I have used the Forest Service maps except for the Caples Lake quad, which had not been issued by the Forest Service at the time this project began.
Each entry contains the place name in bold type, the state and county, and the quadrangle map name or names in italics. Information on each place name was obtained from many varied sources. (In some instances it proved impossible to discover anything at all.) The citation source appears at the end of each segment of information. It includes the author's name and the page reference. When the author and/or page number is not known, only the title is given. Authors with more than one work cited in the book appear with the author's name followed by one word from the title of each book; for example, James, Heroes, and James, Lake. A list of the sources cited, excluding newspapers, appears in the Bibliography. Newspaper references are given at the end of the citations.
In a number of instances, where a feature is named for the original homesteader or other owner of the land, I have given the location of the land in terms of section, township, and range. Each section is one square mile. There are thirty-six sections in a township, which is the basic unit of reference. A township is a square--six sections on a side. Thus, if you see the following abbreviation: sec. 1, T. 11 N., R. 17 E., it stands for section 1, Township 11 North, Range 17 East. This is on the Echo Lake quadrangle. The range and township numbers are printed on the map borders, and every section is numbered. The homesteads and patents referred to are records of when that piece of land left control of the federal government. These records are preserved on microfilm in the “control document index” files of the General Land Office at the Bureau of Land Management on Cottage Way in Sacramento.
Lake Tahoe history has been made by Washoe Indians, explorers, trappers, settlers, road surveyors, ranchers, lumbermen, developers of the early tourist industry, entrepreneurs, scientists, naturalists, writers, and the present inhabitants, land developers, and conservationists. Tahoe place names have evolved from all of these varied and colorful groups.
Few people are aware of the Washoe heritage at Lake Tahoe, since so few Washoe names exist to remind us of their past presence. Tallac and Tahoe are the only two Washoe names in the Tahoe basin that are on present-day maps.
The earliest reports on the Washoe date from the mid-1800s. In 1954 Alfred Louis Kroeber wrote: "The Washo have been unduly neglected by students of the Indian. What little is on record concerning them makes it difficult to place them." Lake Tahoe was the center of the Washoe world, as it still is today.
In February 1844 Washoe Indians counseled John Charles Fremont against crossing the Sierra Nevada in the dead of winter. He chose to ignore their advice, and in the crossing many of the party's animals perished, and his men suffered from the lack of provisions and from the cold. On February 13 Fremont and his cartographer, Charles Preuss, climbed Red Lake Peak, and from its summit became the first white men known to have seen Lake Tahoe. Frémont referred to it only as a "mountain lake." Preuss, on the map of 1848, named it "L. Bonpland" after Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland (1772–1858), a French botanist and companion of the Prussian explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859).
Eleven years later, William Henderson, El Dorado County surveyor, made the first recorded survey for a wagon road across the Sierra. During the summer of that year, Sherman Day and George H. Goddard conducted a second wagon-road survey, under the direction of State Surveyor General Seneca Hunt Marlette. The Whitney Survey visited the east side of Lake Tahoe in 1863, as did the California-Nevada state boundary survey.
After the roads were built and the Comstock Lode discovered, thousands of people traveled through the region. Inns and way stations for the accommodation of travelers sprang up, and ranches, dairies, and lumbermills were created to meet the demand for produce and building materials. Much of the early history of the Lake Tahoe region is concerned with the destruction of the forests and the shipping of vast quantities of timber to the Washoe mines.
The wealthy of California and Nevada built summer estates along Tahoe's shores. Resorts welcomed the many tourists who sought the high mountain air, the glorious scenery, and the renowned fishing. After the Second World War, Tahoe changed from a primarily summer resort area to one of year-round activity. Much has changed since 1844, but for those who hold it sacred, the lake is as precious as always.