Storekeeper W.W. Boone settled in southern Anderson Valley among families who brought Scottish and Midwestern patterns of speech in the mid 1890s. Young men who picked hops and sheared sheep used wit, cleverness, and intelligence to create Boontling, a forceful descriptive 1,500-word language spoken by 500 residents. Its versatility appeared in expressions such as “Bucky Waltered my appoled to a tidricks for bahl chiggul and zeese,” meaning “I telephoned my girlfriend to go to a party for good food and coffee.” Its derivations reflected local life: an Indian-head nickel called a “Bucky” paid for a phone call, Walter Levi owned the first telephone, “applehead” became girlfriend by circumlocution, “tea-drinkers” was shortened into a word for party, two words came from Scottish speech, and the term for coffee honored camp cook C.Z. “Zeese” Blivens’s renowned strong brew. Use declined after 1917, when Boonville men marched into the Great War, but Boontling continued to amaze listeners and baffle outsiders.