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“Exploration of the Sierra Nevada” (1925)
by Francis P. Farquhar

Bolton Coit Brown¹⁰²

Bolton Colt Brown, Professor of Fine Arts at Stanford University, devoted his attention mainly to the sources of Kings River. In 1895, after a trip in Kings River Canyon and a vain attempt to reach the summit of Mount King, he crossed to Simpson Meadow and ascended Mount Woodworth; thence he made his way up Cartridge Creek and returned to the head-waters of the South Fork of Kings River. Here he observed and named Split Mountain, Striped Mountain, and Arrow Peak, and returned to Kings River Canyon by way of Paradise Valley. In the following year, accompanied by his wife, Lucy Fletcher Brown, he again visited Kings River Canyon and joined Joseph N. Le Conte in a successful ascent of Mount Gardner. After a visit to Mount Brewer, he and Mrs. Brown crossed the Kings-Kern Divide and climbed Mount Williamson. A little later, Brown made the first ascent of Mount Stanford and gave it its name. He concluded the season with a successful ascent of Mount King after a daring solitary climb.

Three years later, in 1899, Mr. and Mrs. Brown returned to the Kings River region, bringing with them their two year old daughter, who seemed to enjoy the entire trip and was undoubtedly the most youthful pioneer of the High Sierra. From camp, at Bullfrog Lake near Kearsarge Pass, they explored the basin to the north with its many lakes and remarkable granite formations, naming one of them The Fin.

Professor Brown made a series of admirable sketches of the mountain summits, which appear in the Sierra Club Bulletin accompanied by a number of charts showing his routes and the names which he gave to many of the landmarks. A number of them names survive on present maps, but unfortunately a few, such as Flying Cloud Pass and Castilleja Lake, have disappeared.

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¹⁰² Sierra Club Bulletin, 1896, I, 7, pp. 241-253, 289; 1896, I, 8, pp. 293-313; 1897, II, 1, pp. 17-29; 1897, II, 2, pp. 90-98; 1900, III, 2, pp. 135-149.

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