Yosemite > Library > Exploration of the Sierra Nevada > Wallace, Wales and Wright >

Next: Lil A. Winchell • Contents • Previous: Frank Dusy

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

Wallace, Wales and Wright

In the same little guide-book that gives us the information about Dusy and Tehipite, there is considerable information about the Upper Kern River region derived from accounts furnished by Captain James William Abert Wright. In 1881 he made a trip to Mount Whitney with William B. Wallace (now judge of the Superior Court of Tulare County), and the Reverend F. H. Wales. The three spent a night on the summit of Mount Whitney in company with members of Langley’s party. ⁸⁹ They then climbed Kaweah Peak and visited the head-waters of the Kern. A number of the peaks and canyons were named on this trip and the names are shown on Wright’s map which was published both in Elliott’s History of Fresno County and in the “Guide.” Although several of these names are appropriate and certainly have the right of priority, they have lapsed from use or have been superseded because the publications were not known to those who made subsequent maps. A few of the names remain, however, such as Mounts Young, Hitchcock, and Guyot.

Wallace made his first excursion in the Sierra in 1876 and still continues an active interest in the mountains, recently delivering an inspiring Fourth of July address from the brow of Moro Rock, whence he could look off up the Kaweah canyons to the Scenes of his expeditions of nearly fifty years ago. He was one of the most active men in the Mineral King mining excitement of 1879, and for the next few years searched the Kings-Kern Divide and the head-waters of the Kaweah for signs of gold, silver, and copper. It was on one of these expeditions that he located and named his Cloud Mine, from which came the name Cloud Creak, the easterly branch of Roaring River. ⁹⁰ In 1889, in company with D. K. Zumwalt and John R. Zumwalt, he descended the Kings River from the upper canyon to a point below the ju[n]ction of the South and Middle forks. Supposing that they would be able to go through in one day, they were surprised to find themselves entangled in almost insurmountable difficulties and only emerged after a battle of five days.

————
⁸⁹ Wallace, in Mount Whitney Club Journal, 1902, pp. 1-12.

⁹⁰ Sierra Club Bulletin, 1924, XII, 1, pp. 47-48.

Next: Lil A. Winchell • Contents • Previous: Frank Dusy

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/exploration_of_the_sierra_nevada/wallace.html