Madulce Peak

Madulce Peak rises in California’s San Rafael Mountains within the Transverse Ranges and stands as the highest point in the Dick Smith Wilderness. Its summit once held a fire lookout built in the 1930s, reflecting a time when remote mountain tops were used to watch for wildfires across the backcountry, though the structure burned down in the 1970s. The peak’s name also preserves an unusual linguistic history. Surveyors first called it Strawberry Peak, but Madulce later took hold. Although once thought to be the Spanish word for strawberry, the name was later traced by the United States Forest Service to local farmhand slang derived from the Catalan word maduixa.

California · United States