Rivers, peaks & landmarks
Where the names of America's best-known rivers, mountains, lakes and canyons come from. Each story links to the town stories nearby.
South Dakota's highest point was Harney Peak, after an Army general, until 2016, when a federal board renamed it for the Lakota holy man Black Elk.
DocumentedChesapeake Bay got its name secondhand, from a village: in 1612, John Smith wrote that the bay was named for the home of the Chesapeake people.
DisputedNobody knows who first called the Grand Canyon grand, but the name was in print by 1857, a dozen years before John Wesley Powell's river trip.
UnknownIn 1776, two Spanish friars heard of a lake so salty its water made your skin itch, and that salt is the whole story behind the name Great Salt Lake.
DocumentedFor 75 years, California's official name for Lake Tahoe was Lake Bigler, after a governor, while nearly everyone called it by its Washoe name.
DocumentedThe Mississippi River's name means "great river," a Minnesota scholar wrote in 1920, but two years later a history of Kentucky said it meant "Fish River."
DisputedMount Rainier is named for a British admiral who never saw it: in May 1792, George Vancouver gave the peak his friend Peter Rainier's name.
DocumentedNiagara Falls is named for its river, and the river's name, as early writers explained it, had nothing to do with falling water: it meant a neck.
DocumentedBefore they were the Rocky Mountains, they were the Shining Mountains, the Stony Mountains and, to one French officer in the 1750s, the montagne de Roche.
DocumentedYosemite Valley was named by a campfire vote in 1851, and most of the men who voted didn't know what the word meant.
Disputed