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Recently, Mary Alice and I were traveling west on Route 6 with the Armenia Mountain on our left when she mentioned that the haze on the mountain reminds her of the Great Smoky Mountains. The haze is from the fires in Canada.
She then questioned how the Smoky Mountains got their name, and I began to wonder how the names were picked for other mountains.
The name Rocky Mountain is a translation of the Native American Cree Tribe word as-sin-wati, which means looking at the mountains, especially from the east on the prairies, where they appear as a great rock mass.
At the first sighting of the Rocky Mountains, the mountain men called them the Shining Mountains because of the way the sun reflected off their snow-covered peaks.
Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Smoky Mountains, which are the dividing line between North Carolina and Tennessee, were named by early explorers. The mountains of Virginia appear blue, and the Smoky Mountains appear smoky.
According to the book "Forests, A Naturalist's Guide to Trees and Forest Ecology" by Laurence C. Walker, the reason for the Blue Ridge Mountains appearing to be blue and the Smoky Mountains appearing smoky comes from the spruce and fir trees in the area. These trees produce oily droplets of resin known as terpenes, which air testers call particulates that are minute. The sun's rays reflecting and refracting on and through the minute droplets, accompanied by temperature inversions, give the air a haze that led to the names given to the mountains by the early explorers.
I recently heard a meteorologist on television say that particulates in the air from the fires in Canada are the reason we can see the smoke.
Others say that the name of Smoky Mountains comes from an early morning shroud of fog that often hovers over the mountain range. This fog is the result of warm humid air from the Gulf of Mexico cooling rapidly in the higher elevations, while others say that the smoke comes from the bluish mist that envelopes the mountains. The Cherokee called the Smoky Mountains shah-con-as-jey, meaning place of the blue smoke.
The Catskill Mountains of New York were originally named the kaatski by 17th century Dutch Settlers. In 1665, Nicholos Visscher drew a map, with the land and mountains called Landt Van Kats Kills. After the British took possession of the colony in the late 17th Century, they tried to replace the Dutch names with English names. It was only after Washington Irving's stories that the name Catskill became the permanent name.
The French explorers that settled in the Vermont area gave the name Verts Monts, meaning Green Mountains, to the mountains.
There has been much discussion over the origin of the name White Mountains, which are located in New Hampshire. This name along with others, such as White Hills and Wine Hills are found in literature from colonial times. When these mountains were first sighted from shipboard off the coast, the highest peaks were often snow-capped. An alternate theory is that the mica laden granite of the summits appeared white to observers.
The Allegheny Mountains are part of the Appalachian Mountains along with the Blue, Smoky, Green, Catskill and Ozark Mountains. The Allegheny Mountains run for 400 miles from northcentral Pennsylvania through western Maryland, eastern West Virginia and southwest Virginia. These mountains received their name from the Allegheny River. The word Allegheny comes from the Lenape (Delaware) Tribe and translates to "fine river."
The name for the Ozark Mountains came from the linguistic French abbreviation of Aux Arks, which is short for Aux Arkansas. Arkansas in English or aux Arcs, meaning "of the arches," which is in reference to the dozens of natural bridges formed by erosion and the collapsed caves in the region. After the Louisiana Purchase, Americans traveling in the region referred to the area as the Ozark's, and by the 20th century, the name remained.
The entire chain of these mountains is known as the Appalachian Mountains. The name comes from apalchen or apalachen, which is the name of the native tribe that was located near present-day Tallahassee, Florida. The Spanish altered the name to Apalachee, which was used to describe the region. The Spanish explorer Panfilio de Narvaez entered the Apalachee territory on June 15, 1528, and applied the name.
The Appalachians are among the oldest mountains on Earth, born of powerful upheavals within the terrestrial crust and sculpted by the ceaseless action of water upon the surface. The two types of rock that characterize the present Appalachian ranges tell much of the story of the mountains' long existence.
Our area mountains are part of the Appalachian and known as the Endless Mountains Chain. The early pioneers, who traveled with wagons drawn by either oxen or horses, climbed up and over these mountains mile after mile, must have thought the mountains were endless. No one knows who gave the mountains their name, but the name goes back over 200 years when it appeared on early maps.
My favorite view of the endless mountains is seen when traveling north on Route 15, approaching Trout Run in northern Lycoming County. The new four-lane highway allows an impressive view of the mountains to the north. When I see these mountains, I know that I will soon be home.
Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.