High Sierra Topix

Hi Everyone,

The root of this post goes back several years when my wife and I cut off the JMT before Muir Pass to visit those lakes (like Hester and Ladder) on the East side of the Black Divide. After a long talus slog, we wound up at Lake 11,654 which is a tad southeast of the Black Giant. With the angle of the sun, the lake's water looked luminously black and its surface was glinting with millions of diamond-like sparkles. Ever since, we (anecdotally) refer to this lake as Black Diamond Lake.

It finally dawned on me that there is a formal procedure by which the Domestic Names Committee (DNC) of the USGS's Board on Geographic Names can be petitioned to add a name to geographical features that currently lack a name (if approved, the name will then appear on USGS topo maps). And this prompted two questions:

First, has anyone affiliated with HST ever submitted such a proposal? Please chime in with your experience if you have.

Second, is anyone interested in helping me give this a trial run? I downloaded the online form for proposing names that is available on the DNC webpage, and for locations in wilderness areas, the DNC demands explicit justification for "saddling" a wilderness site with a name (this strikes me as a bit reactionary, because names are prominent throughout wilderness areas). If you are willing to be quoted as supporting this effort, I'll include your name in the application (or at least, the number of "ayes" from HSTers). I also suspect that a few HSTers will regard this effort as worse than leaving cairns in obscure places, but hey, all the DNC has to do is say no. And I'm happy to document the number of supporters versus contrarians.

Cameron

Good luck with this! If you do a bit of homework, you will find the two primary ways Sierra geographic features got names are:

1. Survey crews assigned the names.
2. Locations got assigned names to honor some individual, mostly these were political or historical figures.

So nowadays the DNC is disinclined to name mountains, lakes, and similar features for sentimental or personal reasons.

But sometimes a contemporary personality gets a place named in their honor. For example: Punta Bardini, a ridge just east of Sherwin Peak, south of Old Mammoth, was named after the late Alan Bard (aka the Great Bardini), an Owens Valley legend who was a nationally renown, professional outdoor guide, writer, and was prominent in advancing public interest in backcountry skiing in the Sierra during the latter half of the 20th century. A fine tribute to a local hero; nevertheless it required a considerable PR campaign to get this request fulfilled.

Ed

Yes.
I tried to get a mountain named. The process is involved, and there are limits and policies.
New names inside designated Wilderness are discouraged, but not prohibited. If a person, he or she should have local significance (so no naming anything after your favorite uncle as a birthday present to him). The name must not have any punctuation or diacritical marks, and if not a common English word, is checked against a database they have of offensive words, profanities, or other inappropriate terms in foreign languages. I always thought that would be a cool database to have.
It helps if you have local buy-in from the county or other local entity. This is where my attempt stalled. The county Supervisors were not opposed to my efforts, but did not deem it important enough to ever get it on their agenda for approval. I retired and the effort ended.

Most existing names were incorporated when the area was first surveyed and used the existing common name. New ones must go through their process. This may be a way to get a name. If enough local people start using that name, future map editions may start using it.

Sec of Interior Deb Haaland has a initiative going now of renaming anything on Interior lands that could even sound remotely offensive to anyone. I call it bowdlerizing local history, but that is another topic.

Dave & Ed,

Thanks for the comments. I've responded more extensively to the comments in this same thread which I also stuck in the backpacking section. For now, I'm going to take a flyer on doing this so that I get a sense (like Dave got) of the obstacles. Cameron