Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 18, 2016 - 11:27am PT
|
Check this out, from an article titled "From Sacramento to Carson Valley," in The Sacramento Daily Union, November 15, 1859:
"Sugarloaf" is clearly named, but in the (overblown) description of what is clearly Lovers Leap, the cliff apparently doesn't yet have a name.
If you're a true enthusiast, you can read the whole article in the California Digital Newspaper Collection, courtesy of the University of California, Riverside. (Which is a phenomenal resource, but a bit awkward to learn how to navigate.)
|
|
NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2016 - 11:56am PT
|
First time my partner and I went to climb Traveler's Buttress, we rounded the corner and saw Sugarloaf and brought the car to an immediate halt. We got out, scrambled to the top, and never made it to Lover's Leap that weekend. (edit: Actually, I think we made it to Lover's Leap but with too little daylight in winter to do the climb).
My partner even bought a house in the shadow of the thing, and had it until he moved to France.
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 18, 2016 - 12:42pm PT
|
Except for that "head of Strawberry Valley under the summit of the main divide" bit...
My vote goes for him describing the Leap. Plus, the Leap is more of a "beetling" cliff than Eagle Rock.
To the traveler of 1859, Strawberry Valley was a clearly defined place, exactly where it is today. There was a well-known station on site.
The keeper's name was "Mr. Berry." I suspect the site name has less to do with strawberries, than with the fact that you slept on straw on the floor at Mr. Berry's station.
[Hmmm.... the post I'm disputing here disappeared...]
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 18, 2016 - 01:30pm PT
|
Jebus... that's excellent. Although I doubt any self-respecting 1850s dude besides a painter climbed up to that vantage. When was it painted?
|
|
Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2016 - 01:43pm PT
|
I remember that the name came from a Native American legend similar to our Romeo and Juliet so the pre-whiteman name was translated as such or whoever came up with Lover's Leap might have heard the legend and gave it that name without even trying to find out what the natives called it. Interesting little tidbit, Greg. Are you going to research it further?
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 18, 2016 - 02:27pm PT
|
I wasn't planning to, Wayno.... I just happened to stumble across the Sugar Loaf reference in an article I was otherwise reading. Having developed a passing interest in the events of 1859.
Although I am curious to know where those names came from first time. Sugar Loaf is clearly a Gold Rush name. (I've become mildly obsessed with Gold Rush era names. Humbug Flat. Jackass Gulch. Whisky Diggins. Cut-Eye Foster's Bar. Those are Astroman and The Naked Edge quality names.)
I've never heard about the Leap being a pre-contact name. Without evidence, my gut suspects that's an apocryphal story, since if it were, it would probably have been in circulation among the immigrant population prior to 1859 and I think the author of the article I cited would have used it if the cliff had been named at the time of his writing... he uses the name of damn near everything else on his trip.
(And thx Jebus)
|
|
donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2016 - 03:00pm PT
|
Apparently some spurned lover had yet to do the honorable thing and take the leap. Today they just go out and solo something near their limit.
|
|
Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2016 - 05:07pm PT
|
My memory is shot so I could be wrong or at least confused. I think that Lover's Leap has probably been used before 1859 as a place-name somewhere and the story being attributed to native legend could very well have been concocted. The first settlers might have heard the legend from the natives but were too illiterate to write down or pronounce the name and just called it Lover's Leap after another place with a similar story. Or maybe it was a lovesick miner that took the plunge. Interesting nonetheless.
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 18, 2016 - 07:07pm PT
|
You might be right about the name, Wayno. I don't know. Other than the author cited above NOT using the name, I have no other data point.
But don't blame illiteracy. Only 11.5% of the white population in 1870 was unable to read or write. NCES statistics.
That number was probably higher in 1860, but I'd be surprised if it were 5% higher, and it might well have been lower in California, since contrary to legend, the Gold Rush tended to be a middle class and lower middle class affair--people who tended to have had some education. It was expensive to emigrate. The cheapest way was to walk across, but that required not less than $100 of coin, a sum which most American unskilled, unpropertied laborers had a hard time accumulating. Cost more to come via the Isthmus of Panama.
(The guy I'm interested in was a penniless Irish immigrant whose father had died when he was 11. He supported his mother and sister for five years in the 1840s selling newspapers on the streets of NY, averaging 50 cents to a dollar a day, living in the slums on Frankfurt Street (south edge of the Five Points slum famous in The Gangs of New York; the site of the house he grew up in is now part of the Brooklyn Bridge approach), and then when he hit 16 (in 1846 or 1847) and could apprentice, it took him three YEARS of shipyard work in New York after news of the gold strike broke to accumulate the money to emigrate. And he was a legendarily hard working dude.)
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 18, 2016 - 07:16pm PT
|
I'm definitely curious to see "Lovers Leap" in print.
I wonder what is the earliest known usage, a la the OED
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 18, 2016 - 07:31pm PT
|
Likewise, Charles. The best I've hit so far is a clause inked by a then-obscure Territorial Enterprise reporter that goes:
"... with the serene confidence which a Christian feels in four aces."
Which I found so jaw-droppingly good that it made me want to quit and take up basket weaving. Or climbing.
Of course, that reporter's name was Sam Clemens, and he would go on to become perhaps the best American writer of the 19th Century... as Mark Twain. (His moniker first appeared in The TE, and he certainly passed beneath Lovers Leap and Sugar Loaf several times while traveling between "above" (Virginia City) and "below" (San Francisco) and possibly spent several nights in transit at Strawberry Station.)
If there were a great story then circulating about the cliff, hard to imagine him not telling it. Or riffing from it.
|
|
Gregory Crouch
Social climber
Walnut Creek, California
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jul 18, 2016 - 07:44pm PT
|
Because I'm that kind of a geek, I just looked up the whole reference.
It was in The Territorial Enterprise in April of 1864, then reprinted in The Golden Era, May 22, 1864 as "Washoe: Information Wanted," when Mark Twain answers a letter from William, a Missourian curious about conditions in Virginia City and the Comstock Lode.
"Allow me to answer your inquiry as to the character of our climate.
"It has no character to speak of, William, and alas! In this respect it resembles many, ah, too many chambermaids in this wretched, wretched world. Sometimes we have the seasons in their regular order, and then again we have winter all summer and summer all winter.... It is mighty regular about not raining, though, William. It will start in November and rain about four, and sometimes as much as seven days on a stretch; after that, you may loan out your umbrella for twelve months, with the serene confidence which a Christian feels in four aces..."
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2016 - 09:07pm PT
|
This shot blows me away! Where's all the trees? Welp, the've been logged for the gold towns down canyon.
I don't know. Strawberry meadow could've seemed longer without the trees? Kyburz and the surrounding area around Sugar Loaf, without any trees would be more spacious. The authors description of it being "conical" leads me to question..
edit; sorry for the pic of a pic. thats a good shot of "Out The Bigtop" tho, eh? A3 full adventure! FA. Wendal Robie;)
edit; edit: man, if you click on the enlarge image, the picture is quite clear! Amazing these iphones,eh? i'd trade mine for one of those stagecoaches tho, same price new about $800. Ha!
|
|
Ed H
Trad climber
Santa Rosa, CA
|
|
|
Jul 18, 2016 - 09:47pm PT
|
^^^ Great pic Blue - TFPU!
The trail looks pretty flat - nothing like that ankle busting section of Pony Express trail today.
|
|
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2016 - 01:31am PT
|
From California Place Names by Erwin G. Gudde (fourth edition revised and expanded by William Bright).
'Love. A number of geographic features in various parts of the state bear names like Love, Lovejoy, Loveland; but usually they were named for persons (as Lovelady, and Lovelock were) and have nothing to do with tender emotions. However, El Dorado, Santa Clara and Placer Cos. each have a Lovers Leap. This is a favorite American name for a cliff, not because a lover ever jumped from one so named, but because it would be "a good place to take off, if anyone wanted to" (Stewart, p. 129). By decision of the BGN, 1961, the name of Point Aulon (see Abalone) was changed to Lovers Point.'
Stewart, p. 129 refers to G. R. Stewart, Names on the land, 4th edition (San Francisco: Lexicos, 1982).
BGN refers to the U.S. Board on Geographical Names
|
|
crankster
Trad climber
No. Tahoe
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2016 - 06:21am PT
|
Great thread! The unnamed author is no doubt describing Lover's Leap, despite referencing its height to two-thousand feet.
And the accommodations at Strawberry have improved a bit... "Passengers arrive at Strawberry valley expecting and requiring a decent night's sleep. They are furnished their meals in a wretched hovel, and are (or were recently) lodged on the second floor of an unfinished and unfurnished log cabin, where they are expected to " take it as they can catch it," on the floor in a row of mattresses, each providing his covering, and making his toilet the next morning at the horse trough".
|
|
JerryA
Mountain climber
Sacramento,CA
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2016 - 06:53am PT
|
On the last page of the 1861 first edition of Richard Burton"s "The City of the Saints and Across the Rocky Mountains to California " there is a black & white drawing of a cabin and Lovers Leap captioned "Strawberry " . Burton describes crossing the Sierra Nevada at Johnson Pass on his way to Sacramento. Brewer must have been near by when he climbed Pyramid Peak in 1864 .
|
|
mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
|
|
|
Jul 19, 2016 - 06:55am PT
|
"I think that Lover's Leap has probably been used before 1859 as a place-name somewhere"--Wayno
Indeed. Just look at "Lovers Leap" on Google Images.
Here's one I've heard of, aside from the one in Santa Clara Co, which was ascended by some curious climbing nut driving by last year.
I would have checked Stewart if you hadn't mentioned it, Ed.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!