Exploring the stories behind mountain names in the Lake Tahoe region

Tallac, KT, Maggies and Rose.

When snowflakes start flying, the names of Tahoe’s mountains start ringing out in conversations everywhere from the lift line to the grocery store. Skiers and snowboarders rattle off names of local peaks as if they are best friends, trading stories about the tracks they’ve laid down the region’s many mountain faces. 

But while these names are widely used vocabulary in the Tahoe lexicon, their history is far less known. Aside from a few celebrated peaks, most mountain names in the Sierra Nevada are only known at face value. 

Mount Rose and Mount Tallac are case in point. Surely there are skiers and riders who could describe every bowl, chute and cliff on these revered Tahoe peaks, but how many could explain how they got their names? 

Time and again, the forgotten roots of mountain names present a fascinating slice of Tahoe history that connects the past to the present in unique and unexpected ways. Some also shed light on how geographic features became officially recognized on federal maps. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to get a summit named after a loved one, several Tahoe peaks offer lessons on the process.

From long-standing Native American etymologies to recent additions to local maps, there’s a lot to be learned about not only our winter playgrounds, but our year-round communities by exploring the origins of our mountain names.

The Feds Have Final Say

The Washoe were the first to roam the mountains around Lake Tahoe. Having lived in the Tahoe Basin seasonally for at least 6,000 years, they knew the land with intimate detail. The names they used had almost no influence on how Tahoe’s peaks were identified in the future, however.

Washoe Tribe members wearing traditional rabbit fur blankets, photo courtesy Frederick H. Dressler Collection, University of Nevada, Reno, Special Collections Department

White pioneers, trappers and land surveyors who began arriving in the Sierra in the late 1840s started the lineages we are familiar with today. As more explorers passed through the Tahoe region, more peaks were assigned names, which helped early travelers trade information about routes. 

Between 1850 and 1880, all the tallest peaks in the Tahoe area were named, but not all the monikers used by local settlers stuck. Government-sponsored survey teams hired to map the Sierra had final say. U.S. President Benjamin Harrison formalized this process when he signed an executive order in 1890 creating the United States Board on Geographic Names (USBGN), which became the official authority. 

More than 130 years later, the agency still determines what creek, lake or mountain name makes the map. But as a federal agency with often no direct knowledge of specific geographic features, its decisions are largely based on recommendations from authorities at the state level, such as local governments, land management agencies and Native American tribes. 

“We also encourage these entities to seek input from others who might have an interest,” says USBGN member Tara Wallace. “Once the proposed name has gone through this process, the name will be added to the Domestic Names Committee monthly docket for a vote.”

Nearly every state, including California and Nevada, has a geographic name authority board. These boards are the first to consider applications from the public, which its members then research before sending their recommendation to the USBGN for final approval. The process is not taken lightly, says Christine Johnson, executive secretary of the Nevada State Board on Geographic Names (NSBGN). 

“It takes at least a year of research, discussion and public outreach in order to organize our recommendation to the USBGN, though we have seen names take two years or more for various reasons,” says Johnson. “We are of the opinion that a permanent name on the nation’s map should take time and thoughtful care to process.” 

As such, Johnson has advice to anyone looking to name a mountain after a loved one: Do your homework.

“Successful proposals are generally well-researched,” she says. “We look for redundancy. Are there other ‘Willow peaks?’ We look for relevance. If this is a commemorative name for a person, how is this person connected to the site? And we certainly seek and consider comments from tribal authorities.”

Tahoe’s Newest Mountain Names

Naming authority boards across the country were put to task in November 2021 when U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland declared the word sq**w to be derogatory and ordered the renaming of 660 geographic features on federal lands that contained the word.  

The mandate led to the creation of Tahoe’s newest official mountain name. In September 2022, Sq**w Peak at the top of what is now Palisades Tahoe resort was renamed Washeshu Peak, which is Washoe for “the people.” 

The storied peak is now on its third name, as settlers in the 1870s referred to it as Sugar Loaf.

Sandy and Wayne Poulsen, namesakes of both streets and summits in Olympic Valley, photo courtesy Poulsen Family Collection

Olympic Valley is home to another peak that was named in recent years. The mountain above the neighborhoods on the valley’s north side was officially named Poulsen Peak in 2005 in honor of Wayne Poulsen (1915-1995), the visionary who developed Olympic Valley into the renowned ski destination it is today.

In 1948, Poulsen named what would become one of the resort’s most famous peaks after a now legendary descent by his wife Sandy. As the story goes, the couple had hiked up from the south side of the valley, but when the time came to drop in on the steep north face, Sandy was terrified. To quell her fears, she traversed back and forth across the slope, making kick turns in the trees. To tease her for the awkward descent, her husband named the peak KT-22 after the number of kick turns she made.  

In contrast to trolling someone’s fear, a peak a mile north of Olympic Valley was named after a brave member of the Tahoe community. In 1992, a high point on the Sierra Crest above the Pole Creek drainage became known as Billy’s Peak in memory of William “Billy” Dutton (1951-1989), who was one of the founding members of the Tahoe Nordic Search and Rescue team.

Billy’s Peak joins many others that pay homage to notable Tahoe residents, but it’s on a short list of mountains named after people who lived in the last century.

The other four are Trimmer and Waterhouse peaks on Tahoe’s South Shore, Herlan Peak on the East Shore and Jake’s Peak on the West Shore.

Trimmer Peak is named after Arnold Robert Trimmer (1904-1985), a rancher and owner of the last working farm in the Tahoe Basin. Trimmer and his family drove cattle from the Carson Valley to summer grazing lands near the base of the mountain that now holds his name. 

Waterhouse Peak, which guards the west side of Luther Pass, was named after Clark Waterhouse (1893-1917), who was in charge of the Angora Fire Lookout before he was killed in World War I. Located on the ridge south of Fallen Leaf Lake, the lookout was put in service in 1914 and has southern views toward Waterhouse Peak.

Herlan Peak, which rises directly above Sand Harbor, is named after Peter J. Herlan (1909-1977), a naturalist with the Nevada State Museum who collected specimens in the area.

Across the lake, Jake’s Peak, which frames the north side of Emerald Bay, was named after Jeffery “Jake” Smith (1954–1982), a ski patroller who died in the tragic Alpine Meadows avalanche in March 1982. Smith loved to backcountry ski on his namesake peak, so his brother successfully petitioned the USBGN to name it after him in 1986 as both a memorial and monument to avalanche awareness.

Ever-Evolving Names on the West Shore

Many of the peaks above Tahoe City and the West Shore recognize settlers from the nineteenth century.

Mount Watson was named after Tahoe’s first constable, Robert Montgomery Watson, who arrived in the area in the 1870s and went on to establish the cross-country route over the Sierra that later became the Western States Trail. 

Scott Peak at Alpine Meadows was named after Alice and John Brown Scott, who opened a hotel in the 1880s on Bear Creek just upstream from the Truckee River. Scott Peak was not the mountain’s first name, however. Steamer boat guides who plied Tahoe’s waters in the 1870s thought the mountain’s prominent profile resembled a bear, so they identified it to their boat passengers as Grizzly Bear Peak, Bear’s Profile or the Sleeping Bear. 

Flanked by rugged terrain to the east and west, Rubicon Peak was named for the formidable mountain travel it imposed, photo by Seth Lightcap

Steamer boat runs from Tahoe City to the South Shore in the late nineteenth century also led to the naming of two well-known peaks above Emerald Bay. A woman named Mary McConnell climbed the southernmost of the two summits in 1870 and named it Fleetfoot Peak, but that choice did not resonate with the steamer crews. 

The boatmen instead called the two peaks Round Buttons, Sq**aw Tits or, later, Maggie’s Mountains, potentially in reference to McConnell. They later became Maggies Peaks, which became official in 1977.

Other West Shore summits that have been renamed over the years include Ward Peak, which was known as Old Hat Peak in the 1870s, Twin Peaks, originally called Union Peaks in a Civil War reference to the two pyramid-shaped peaks being connected, and Gray Ridge, a craggy feature just south of Meek’s Bay. 

When the influential Wheeler Survey team visited Tahoe in 1876-77, they apparently didn’t care for the sound of Gray Ridge and listed it instead as Rubicon Peak on subsequent maps. The name Rubicon was supposedly chosen as the rugged nature of the ridgeline made it a “point of no return” analogous to Roman general Julius Caesar’s famous crossing of the Rubicon River in 49 B.C. 

The Wheeler Survey also changed the name of Mount Tallac. In the 1860s, Tahoe’s most prominent mountain was known as Crystal Peak. The survey team didn’t think that was original enough for a mountain of such majesty, so they asked one of their Washoe guides what they called it. 

The guide replied, “dalá’ak,” a Washoe common noun meaning “great mountain” or “large mountain.” The surveyors mistook the word as a proper noun and entered Mount Tallac on their map. The mistake effectively named the peak “mountain mountain” when translated by the Washoe. 

Peaks of Desolation

Desolation Wilderness is home to over a dozen peaks, the tallest of which, 9,985-foot Pyramid Peak, was among the first to be named in the Tahoe region. The towering mountain was a landmark for settlers crossing the Sierra in the 1840s and ’50s
and was identified by its obvious resemblance to the pyramids of Egypt.

Desolation’s second tallest summit, Dicks Peak (9,974 feet), was named after Captain Richard “Dick” Barter, who was also known as “the Hermit of Emerald Bay.”

Ralston Peak was named after William Chapman Ralston, a banker known for his generosity, photo by Seth Lightcap

Barter was a sailor who later in life became the caretaker of a mansion in Emerald Bay. From 1863 to his untimely death in 1875, he lived mostly alone and would often go months at a time without seeing anyone. He loved to get drunk and row his boat on the lake, but the pastime would end up being his demise. On his last intoxicated outing, his boat capsized in a storm and he drowned off Rubicon Point.

Ralston Peak is named for William Chapman Ralston, a banker who made millions by investing in Nevada’s Comstock mines in the 1860s and ’70s. Ralston was a beloved resident of San Francisco, where he invested heavily in the city. He built opera houses, theaters, a massive luxury hotel and was critical to the early development of Golden Gate Park.  

In a departure from the norm, Angora Peak was not named after the man who settled at the base of the mountain, Nathan Gilmore, but rather for the herd of Angora goats he kept on his settlement. Gilmore later donated most of the land that became Desolation Wilderness. 

Echo Peak and the adjacent Echo Lakes were named by settlers in the 1860s for the echoes that resounded off the surrounding granite. Riding the coattails of this theme nearly a century later, Talking Mountain appeared on forest service maps in 1945 as a nod to this auditory marvel. 

Name It Like You Own It

One of the tallest mountains in the Tahoe Basin was named by an immigrant from Virginia named Moses Job, who opened a trading post on the west side of the Carson Valley in 1854. According to legend, Job climbed what is now Jobs Peak, planted an American flag at the summit and proclaimed the name of the 10,638-foot mountain as his own. 

Nevada survey teams must have been impressed with his gusto, as they used Job’s Group of Mountains to describe the three adjacent peaks on maps in 1855. Maps made in 1874 still listed the group of mountains as Job’s Peaks, though the westernmost and tallest of the three had become known as Bald Mountain. 

Jobs Peak was named by Moses Job, a Carson Valley pioneer who thought he was the main character, photo by Seth Lightcap

When the Wheeler Survey came through in 1877, they selected individual names for each of the three summits—one after Job, another after Job’s deceased sister and the westernmost “bald” mountain after a squatter named James Freel, who had recently settled at the base of the peak. 

In a classic case of right place, right time, an otherwise unknown miner turned cattle rancher landed his name on the tallest mountain in the Tahoe Basin—10,886-foot Freel Peak. 

Many other summits on Tahoe’s South Shore, including a few in the Carson Pass area, honor early settlers. Stevens Peak was named after Alpine County supervisor J. M. Stevens, who operated a stagecoach station in Hope Valley in the 1860s. Likewise, Hawkins Peak was named after John Hawkins, the first white settler in Hot Springs Valley, near the present-day Grover Hot Springs State Park. 

Red Lake Peak is the mountain John C. Fremont and Charles Preuss climbed in February 1844 to become the first white men to lay eyes on Lake Tahoe. Sometime in the next two decades, the peak came to be called Red Mountain and the small marshy lake at its base Red Lake. In an odd twist, the peak was later named after the lake.

Just south of Red Lake Peak, Round Top was called Silver Era Peak in the 1860s but was unceremoniously renamed by a survey team in 1876. 

What About Women?

Women are no doubt underrepresented among Tahoe’s mountain names. Aside from Jobs Sister and Maggies Peaks, which both commemorate relatively unidentified women, there are only three peaks in the Tahoe region named after bold pioneering females, and one of them—Mount Rose—has an uncertain etymology. 

Rose was first called Mount Wassoon (or Wassan) in 1855, followed by Boundary Rocks in 1863, Bald Mountain in 1874, Rose Mountain and Rose Peaks in the 1880s and ’90s, and, finally, Mount Rose after the turn of the century. 

Melissa Coray Peak as seen from Round Top Peak, photo by Seth Lightcap

The origin of its current name is open to debate. Some historical records indicate it was named after Rose Hickman, said to be the first woman to climb the peak in the 1880s, while other records suggest it was named after Jacob H. Rose, who built a lumber mill near Franktown, Nevada.

A mountain nestled within a group of peaks near Kirkwood honors Melissa Burton Coray (1828-1903), a Mormon immigrant who was one of five women to complete the entire march of the United States Mormon Battalion. 

Starting from Iowa, Coray and more than 500 men marched nearly 2,000 miles to San Diego at the start of the Mexican-American War in 1846. The conflict was essentially over by the time they arrived in California in January 1847, so the battalion was soon discharged and many began the long walk back east with hopes of settling in the Salt Lake Valley.

Coray was among a group of discharged members who established the Mormon-Carson Pass Emigrant Trail in 1848, which would become the most heavily traveled route over the Sierra during the California Gold Rush.

Nearly a century and a half later, in 1994, Melissa Coray Peak was officially added to the map, recognizing the thousands of pioneer women who helped settle the West. 

North of Tahoe along the Sierra Crest, Mount Lola is the tallest peak in Nevada County (9,147 feet) and was named after Irish-born dancer and actress Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, whose stage name was Lola Montez.

Montez’s life was the stuff of legend. 

A courtesan and dancer in Paris and Munich, she became the mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria before their unsavory relationship led to a revolution, which ultimately forced her to flee to the United States in 1851. Montez continued dancing and acting in the U.S., first on the East Coast and then in San Francisco, where her risqué performances drew both fame and contempt. 

Montez moved to Grass Valley in the Sierra foothills in July 1853 and kept a relatively low profile while teaching dance lessons. She left California in 1856 to entertain gold miners in Australia, but controversy followed, and she soon returned to the U.S., where she lived out her last few years in Philadelphia before dying at age 39 from syphilis.  

Never-Ending Names

The stories behind Tahoe’s mountain names could go on for days. The peaks around Donner Pass alone hold another chapter without even touching the history of the Donner Party.

Did you know Tinker’s Knob was a humorous reference to Soda Springs resident James A. Tinker’s schnoz? Or that Schallenberger Ridge was named after Moses Schallenberger, an 18-year-old who survived a winter living alone on the shores of Donner Lake after his group’s failed attempt to cross Donner Summit in 1844, two years before the Donner Party?

Knowing these stories might not get you up or down any of these mountain slopes any faster, but it might inspire some chairlift or skin track banter. And with a few local pioneer tales in your back pocket, at the very least you’ll be a ringer at the next Tahoe trivia night.

Seth Lightcap is an Olympic Valley-based writer, photographer and avid explorer of Sierra rock, snow and trail.