• Steven Barton founded the town of Isabella near the Kern River and named it for Queen Isabella of Spain in 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition celebrating the quadricentennial of the discovery of America. Sixty years later, a dam was built on the river and the original community was moved to a site one and a half miles south below the dam. The water of Isabella Lake now covers the original site of the town.

• In 1888, the Southern Pacific Railroad built a branchline to a site fifty-two miles southwest of Fresno to carry lignitic coal from nearby mines. This site was known simply as “Coaling Station,” but, according to local tradition, a Southern Pacific official added an “a” to “Coaling” and the name of the present-day Fresno County town of Coalinga was born.

• A crossroads in Madera County used to be known as “Poison Switch” because it was here that early-day teamsters, after unloading their cargo of lumber at the head of the flume to Madera, would “switch off” to a nearby saloon. Today the area is known as “Wassamma” after an Indian village once located in the neighborhood.

• The Kaweah River in Tulare County was discovered by Gabriel Moraga in 1806. He called the river “San Gabriel.” Later the river was renamed “Kaweah” (an early spelling was Kah-weé-ya) after a tribe of Indians that lived near the spot where the river emerges from the foothills.

“...just a taste from the scads of fascinating facts to be mined from Durham’s Place-Names of Central California.

This gazetteer, one of fourteen volumes in the Durham’s Place-Names of California Series, is derived from California’s Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State, David L. Durham’s definitive gazetteer of California. Each volume of the series contains the complete body of entries contained in California’s Geographic Names for the counties covered.

Thousands of topographic features, such as ridges, peaks, canyons and valleys; water features, such as streams, lakes, waterfalls, and springs; and cultural features, such as cities, towns, crossroads and railroad sidings are included. Many entries include information about who named the feature, when and why, as well as alternate or obsolete names. A complete bibliography of sources is included.

Longitude and latitude are given for each feature, a boon to hikers wishing to use GPS devices to keep on track to their destinations.

Guaranteed to provide addictively entertaining browsing for residents of Madera, Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern counties, this book will also delight:

• Tourists • Historians • Geographers • Students • Writers • Cartographers

• Genealogists • Hikers and outdoor folks of all kinds

• Great for browsing.

• Indispensable for research.

• Keep a copy in your car to use on trips!