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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? e-edition | subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Rogue Valley doctor runs for governor on climate change platform ... Emergency services, Oct. 16 ... Since You Asked: Park resurfacing delayed during winter ... Rogue Valley doctor runs for governor on climate change platform ... Emergency services, Oct. 16 ... Since You Asked: Park resurfacing delayed during winter ... SINCE YOU ASKED Since You Asked: Shasta's and Pit's names were swapped Comment MailTribune.com Writer Posted Sep. 11, 2015 at 12:01 AM Posted Sep. 11, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News The peaks of current day Mount McLoughlin and Mount Shasta are intertwined in part through a classic case of confusion in the early 1800s. We added to that confusion in a Sept. 7 column and local historian Jeff LaLande volunteered his services to clear it up. Here now, the rest of the story about the naming of the two most prominent peaks in the region. I’d like to correct errors in the “Since You Asked” column regarding the many names of our Mount McLoughlin. The American who gave the name “Mount Jackson” to it in the 1830s was Hall J. Kelly, not Hall J. Meyer. More important, although Hudson's Bay Company trapper Peter Ogden did name northeastern California’s Pit River (for the deep elk-capturing pits that the native people had dug along its banks), he never named any place (let alone Mount McLoughlin) “Mount Pit.” Nor did he give our present-day Mount Shasta its name. Ogden did see present-day Mount Shasta, and described it in his 1826-27 journal. However, despite numerous statements to the contrary made by later writers, Ogden never, ever, gave it a name of any kind. Instead, on Feb. 14, 1827, while traveling down Bear Creek toward the Rogue River, he named our valley’s very own majestic peak “Mount Sastise” (his spelling for the Shasta Indians he’d been traveling among). Thus, our Mount McLoughlin was, amazingly enough, actually the original Mount Shasta, the one that Ogden named. It bore variations of Ogden’s name (Sastey, Shasty, Chasty) on maps into the 1840s. On some of those same maps, today’s Mount Shasta was labeled “Pit Mountain” — apparently because it was close to those maps' Pit River and surely a big peak like that needed a name on the map! So, how did the two names, Sastise/Shasta vs. Pit/Pitt, get transposed? We'll never know for certain, but it seems likely to have first happened during the 1829 fur-trapping winter trip through our region by Ogden's colleague Alexander Roderick McLeod, who left no journal and would have been on the lookout for Ogden's Mount Sastise/Shastey/Shasta. But, alas, the first big mountain that he saw (and thus called by the Shasta name) was the Mount Shasta of today, probably because the Rogue Valley was filled with dense fog while he traveled through it. While the map-makers actually had "gotten it right," McLeod got it wrong, and later trappers and explorers who came soon after McLeod used his nomenclature. — Jeff Lalande Send questions to “Since You Asked,” Mail Tribune Newsroom, P.O. Box 1108, Medford, OR 97501; by fax to 541-776-4376; or by email to [email protected]. To see a collection of columns, go to mailtribune.com/youasked . We’re sorry, but the volume of questions received prevents us from answering all of them. MailTribune.com Writer Posted Sep. 11, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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