"There," he said, "is the little mountain" by Bob Graham and Peter Lathrop The quotation is of a statement by Kit Carson from Frémont's 1845 Report. It has become often written, and commonly accepted, that "the little mountain" refers to Mt. Diablo. Mt. Diablo is a conspicuous mountain. Although only 3,849 feet at the summit, it stands alone in an otherwise low section of the Coast Range. In 1851, Colonel Leander Ransom, Deputy-Surveyor General, established the initial point of the Mt Diablo meridian at the mountain's summit, beginning the survey of public lands in the new State of California. From Elephants back near Carson Pass--the most likely point from which the 1844 sighting was made--Mt. Diablo lies to the southwest at a distance of 119 miles.
What did the members of the expedition actually record? Frémont, Charity Valley, February 6, 1844: Accompanied by Mr. Fitzpatrick, I set out to-day with a reconnointring party on snow-shoes. We marched all in single file, trampling the snow as heavily as we could. Crossing the open basin, in a march of about ten miles we reached the top of one of the peaks, to the left of the pass indicated by our guide. Far below us, dimmed by the distance, was a large snowless valley, bounded on the western side, at a distance of about a hundred miles, by a low range of mountains, which Carson recognized with delight as the mountains bordering the coast. "There," he said, "is the little mountain--it is fifteen [sic] years since I saw it; but I am just as sure as If I had seen it yesterday." What did Carson mean by the little mountain? These are early references to the Sierra Nevada Range. Jedediah Smith, 1827--"I found the snow so deep on Mount Joseph that I could not cross my horses, five of which starved to death." This was in the vicinity of the American River on the west slope. Mount Joseph was Smith's own name for the Sierra Nevada. In these early records, the word mountain (singular) is used where we would use the word range. It is likely that Carson's "the little mountain," as quoted by Frémont, was a reference only to the lower (than the Sierra Nevada) Coast Range, rather than to a specific landmark. later, in 1856, Carson identified the sighting as of "the Coast Range" to Col. Peters in his dictated memoirs. In checking published studies of the 1844 Frémont route, I found no identification of Carson's "little mountain" as "Mt. Diablo" before Allan Nevins in the 1939 revised edition of his Frémont biography. Gianella makes the identification in 1959, followed by Farquhar, in 1965, who defers to Gianella in the identification. Jackson and Spence in 1970, who frequently refer to Gianella, make the same identification, followed by Ferol Egan in 1977. All of the following authors (listed chronologically) quote the sighting of the Coast Range made by Frémont and Carson on February 6, 1844 and mention or identify the "Coast Range." Those marked with * asterisk make the further identification of "Mt. Diablo." Frémont, Brevet Captain J. C., Report of The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-'44, Printed by order of the Senate of the United States, Gales and Seaton, Washington, 1845.
A note on the name Mount Diablo by the Mt Diablo Interpretive Association: The reference to "diablo" or "devil", can be traced back to 1804 or 1805, when a Spanish military expedition visited the area in search of runaway mission Indians. At a willow thicket near present-day Buchanan Field, the soldiers encountered a Village of Chupcan people and surrounded it. But night came, and evidently all the Indians escaped, unseen. Angry and confused, the Spanish called the site "Monte del Diablo", or "Thicket of the Devil". Later, English-speaking newcomers mistakenly assumed the word "monte" to mean "mountain", and applied the title to this prominent east bay peak. A linguistic accident thus gave California its Devil Mountain.
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Based
on personal observation, one of us [Lathrop]
recently questioned this identification. After many climbs
he had determined that Kit Carson couldn't have recognized
Mt. Diablo from Elephants Back--the ridge left of center in
the Preuss drawing--nor from other nearby vantages, because
the ridge between Melissa Cory, Covered Wagon, and Thimble
Peaks blocks the view at the 244° that is the bearing
of Mt. Diablo. He found that the only view out of the
mountains to the valley and Coast Range is west to
northwest.
Yesterday
I walked to an elevation only three miles away to take a
look for myself at the promised land. It took a terribly
long time to work my way through the snow. I had to rest
several times and returned completely exhausted. In the
valley everything was in fog yesterday. One could only
dimly discern a low mountain range on the other
side, which Kit claims to recognize as the one which
stretches between the Sacramento [River] and the
[Pacific] ocean. Our astronomical observations do
not allow us to doubt this, although I do not quite
believe in the correctness of the longitude.
The
earliest route study, and still one of the
best.
An
email from Peter Lathrop of Carson City. Peter has spent
years hiking in the Markleeville/Carson Pass area--winter
and summer--and has been looking at that part of the Sierra
crossing route in detail.
Just who discovered Carson Pass,
anyway?
