Visitors at Mirror Lake

The opening of Yosemite to tourism in the 1850s coincided with America's glorification of nature and fascination with the picturesque, and early accounts of Mirror Lake were filled with those sentiments, much as visitors today still express similar emotions when encountering such natural splendor. From the earliest days there, Euro-Americans began to leave their mark on Yosemite by keeping a few Ahwahneechee place names but adding new ones for many landscape features. Fanciful naming produced place names such as Cloud's Rest, Royal Arches, Cathedral Peak, Happy Isles, and Bridalveil Fall, while Tisseyak, meaning woman turn to stone, became Half Dome, Ahwiyah, meaning quiet water, became Mirror Lake, Cholok, meaning the fall, became Yosemite Falls, and Weiyow, meaning juniper mountain, became Mt. Watkins.

California · United States