In February 1873, the name Glass Mountains appeared on a map issued by the Federal General Land Office. Two years later, the same office issued another map calling them the Gloss Mountains, creating a conflict that continues to this day. The 1875 map resulted from a survey led by an engineer named T.H. Barrett. Historiographer James Cloud believed that a draftsman copied this map and misread the “A” for an “O.” A persistent legend also holds that a member of the first exploring party, said to be British or Bostonian, awoke one morning in the survey camp on the knoll east of this point, saw sunlight glistening on clear crystals of selenite, and exclaimed in his Eastern dialect, “Why, they look just like glaws,” which the party's cartographer recorded as he thought he heard it.