Placenames are geographic features such as valleys, mountains, lakes, rivers, canyons, gulches and flats which appear on maps, and in literature. Some of these names have become obsolete over time or altered, others are perpetuated forever in written and oral histories.

When Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga ventured out of San Juan Bautista on a scouting expedition into the San Joaquin Valley in 1806, it was unlikely he or his companions had known they were to select the first placenames for what were to become Mariposa and Merced counties. The objective of the party, which included twenty-five men, Moraga and one Padre, was to find a suitable location for a chain of missions. After entering the interior via Pacheco Pass, what they found was a disconsolate combination of desert and tule marsh. The march inland had been so taxing as to inspire one member to disignate the first stream arrived at, El Rio de Nuestra Senora de la Merced. Literally translated, this reads "The River of Our Lady of Mercy." Las Mariposas, "The Butterflies," was the term given to a smaller stream which emptied into a slough of the same name. The application was made in reference to the ample habitation of butterflies which dogged the Moraga expedition at every turn, and which oversaw the watercourse like a myriad of colorful angels. Though Spanish authorities deemed the expedition a failure, their record of the discovery of these waterways was of great significance to the later history of the region.

Thomas O. Larkin puchased an old land grant for his friend John C. Fremont in 1847. This tract of land, known as a "floating grant," first had its headquarters near Bridgeport, among the foothills near Mariposa Creek, and was named appropriately Las Mariposas. Gold was discovered there in 1848, and as fate would have it, the native Californio, Mexican and Spaniard prospecters introduced the late American arrivals to the use of the batea, the Spanish equivalent of a washbowl.

The legacy of the Spanish influence, so important to the early development of the gold diggings, is perpetuated with romantic place names a few of which include Hornitos, Banderita, Mariposita, Penon Blanco, Agua Fria, Pelone, Guadalupe, El Portal, Feliciana Creek, Colorado, Tulitos, Santa Cruz, and El Dorado.

The Mariposa Gazette derided and complained of the Spanish place names so common in the county, whining in an article of 1862, "This matter of 'San' and 'Los' and 'El' etc. should be changed and anglicized. Many should change names as they are meaningless and often coarse and vulgar." And yet, who today can imagine the title Mariposa County being relegated to the less-poetic, anglicized Butterfly County?

With the initial infiltration of the Spanish and American elements, the indigenous Mariposa county Indian community was trampled and overrun, and forced to live in squalid rancherias. Today few ancestors remain. Still, their presence was memorialized in such names as Ahwahnee, Chowchilla, Wawona, Yosemite, Yaqui Gulch, Mono Gulch, Rancheria Flat, Indian Creek. Two locations within county limits called Indian Gulch delineate the existence of Mariposa's only bonafide non-foreign population.

Proudly stamped upon the landscape were names commemorating the place of one's nativity: American Camp, Oro China Gulch, Norwegian Gulch, Dutch Creek, Frenchman's Bar, Italian Creek, China Flat, Washington Flat, New Mexican Camp, Texas Tent, Missouri Gulch, Arkansas Flat, Illinois Hill, Virginia Creek, Jerseydale and Miami.

History has chronicled the names of numberless places which were descriptive of geologic and physical features, including Coppertown, Quartzburg, Gold Hill, Granite Springs, Slate Gulch, Soapstone Ridge, Marble Springs, Split Rock Creek, White Rock, Piney Creek, Courthouse Rock, Red Bank, Rocky Gulch, Brushy Canyon, Flat Top Mountain, Round Hills, Red Mountain, Dry Creek, and Horseshoe Bend. The majority of regional Yosemite place names also fall into this classification.

Frequently seen in that vicinity, and elsewhere are names given for local wildlife, such as Mockingbird Mountain, Pigeon Flat, Skunk Gulch, Wild Cat Mountain, Bull Creek, Buffalo Gulch, Buck Point, Elkhorn, Horse Ridge, Cow And Calf, and Bear Valley.

Some quite fascinating names are to be found amid the host of curious, frequently derrogatory place names, many still in use to date: Greaser Gulch, Nigger Hill, Deadman's Creek, Shanghai Ridge, Rattlesnake Gulch, Bone Yard, Devil's Gulch, Temperance Creek, Bellyache Canyon, Humbug Creek, Bootjack, Hell's Hollow, Forlorn Hope, Flyaway, Drunken Gulch, Whiskey Flat, Rum Hollow, Scotch Gulch, Casa Diablo, Cat Town, Pegleg Creek, Dark Hole, Deer Lick Creek, Usona, Halfway Gulch, Poverty Flat, and Fortynine Gap are among the memorable.

"The appalling name [Deadman's Creek]...covers the vicinity like a black cloud," wrote a traveler touring the countryside in 1875, "the next hill, gulch and creek being somewhat smaller, received the appellation of 'Little Deadman's Creek, Gulch, and Creek'...." While many of the names gracing Mariposa County may seem distastful and without merit to some, there was usually a good reason behind their selection. They were not picked haphazardly. The Deadman's Creek referred to, in the south western section, was a vicinity plagued by violence. Tradition points to the occurance of several tragic and unjustifiably senseless lynchings and murders in the region between 1875 and 1900.



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