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What's
in a Name?
In 2005, an Oakley man proposed changing Mt. Diablo’s name to
a fictitious Indian word, Mt. Kawukum, because he believed the mountain’s name
celebrates Satan. In March 2005, the U.S. Board of
Geographic Names began considering his request and and
after public comments period denied the request at their
board meeting. Now, still
upset over the devilish connotations of Mount Diablo,
the Oakley man has yet again petitioned a federal agency
to rename Contra Costa's signature peak. This time he
wants to rename the 3,849-foot-high mountain after the
40th president of the United States — Ronald Wilson
Reagan.
The Contra Costa County
Board of Supervisors Legislative Committee has
recommended that the Board of Supervisors oppose the
name change. You can join them by sending a letter
to:
Lou Yost, Executive Secretary
U.S. Board on Geographic Names
12201 Sunrise Valley Drive, MS 523
Reston, VA 20192-0523
click
here to read the Contra Costa Times article
How Mt. Diablo got its Name
“On a boggy day in 1806
{1805; 1806 is a
discredited date}
a detachment of
Spanish soldiers apprehended a band of Bay Miwok
Indians in a marsh at the foot of a solitary
California mountain. Commanded to redeliver the
natives to the stern grace of the mission they’d
fled, the Spaniards detained them in a nearby
thicket as night fell. A dun darkness came on,
browning out the stars. The night grew quiet but for
the din of crickets. Then at some deep and slippery
hour the Miwoks vanished, turned to vapor and
floated away in the mist, dematerialized as demons
were known to do. The next morning the soldiers woke
in a dawn steam thick enough to blank the big
mountain from sight. They found themselves bereft of
their errant mission-folk and turned round on their
heels till their heads swam. Bedeviled as they were,
they forswore the place Monte Del Diablo, Thicket of
the Devil, and for years the name lingered like a
fog over that marsh. Then when the English-speaking
settlers arrived, the Spanish Monte was taken for
Mountain and was thought to refer to the
twin-shouldered mass looming nearby. So the mountain
became Mount Diablo, made to bear an unholy
namesake.”
M. Allen Cunningham,
The Green Age of Asher Witherow, 2004
Most of the information below is from Gudde-Bright’s California
Place Names
Mount Diablo, (Wilkes) c. 1837-1841, misidentified post 1805
(San Juan Bautista, 1790; Cerro Alto de los Bolbones,
Oct. 1811; Monte del Diablo land grant, Aug. 24, 1828; peak and range Sierras
Bolbones and Montes Diavolo, 1837; Monte del Diablo and Sierra de los Bolbones,
1844; Mount Diabolo, 1848; Monte del Diablo (Original Township boundaries) April
17, 1850; Monte Diablo (Township reorganization) October 18, 1852; modern
spelling, Mount Diablo, 1850s.
The earliest name of the
mountain was apparently San Juan Bautista (Dalrymple 1790). In Oct. 1811, Ramón
Abella’s diary mentions the peak as Cerro Alto de los Bolbones (‘high hill of
the Bolbones’, i.e., the Indians who live at its foot). The ridge was later
designated as Sierra de los Bolbones (or Golgones, and other variants).
The name Monte del Diablo ‘devil’s woods’
appears on the Plano topográfico de la Misión de San José about 1824, where
there was an Indian rancheria perhaps near a thicket at the approximate site of
the present town of Concord. {Pacheco}
On Aug. 24, 1828, the name was applied to the
Monte del Diablo land grant for which Salvio Pacheco had petitioned in 1827.
Mariano Vallejo’s report of 1850 tells the story of a fight between a detachment
of soldiers from the San Francisco presidio and the Indians at the foot of the
mountain in 1806 {discredited date, actually 1805}. The appearance of “an
unknown personage, decorated with the most extraordinary plumage,” made the
soldiers take to their heels, believing the devil had allied himself with the
Indians; then and there they applied the present name to the mountain. This is
quite certainly fanciful.
Marshin 1850 stated that Vallejo was incorrect
in placing the engagement near the mountain and that it had occurred in the
vicinity of a thicket of willows near the house of Salvio Pacheco (i.e. near
present-day Concord) at a later date.
The name was transferred to the peak by
non-Spanish explorers who associated “monte” with a mountain and applied the
Italian form Monte Diavolo or Diabolo.
Belcher (1:119, writing in 1837) calls the
range Sierras Bolbones and speaks of “the high range of the Montes Diavolo” on
his left (!) as he entered the Sacramento River.
The Wilkes expedition of 1841 definitely fixed
the name on the lofty mountain peak. Duflot de Mofras cautiously gives both
names in 1844, Monte del Diablo and Sierra de los Bolbones (plan 16).
Finally, Frémont and Preuss, on their map of
1848, give the proper latitude and call it Mount Diabolo. Trask’s and other
maps of the early 1850s established the modern spelling, although Monte Diablo
is found as late as 1873 (Hoffman).
The geographic identity of the range headed by
Mount Diablo was recognized by cartographers in Mexican and early American
times. The BGN {Board on Geographic Names} (May 15, 1908) designated the entire
range from Carquinez Strait to Antelope Valley in Kern Co. as Diablo Range to
distinguish it from the other chains of the coast Ranges. (In recent years the
expression “Mount San Diablo” is sometimes heard. Diablo post office is listed
in 1917.”
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