Naming a Peak for an Infidel
Local climbers conquer a previously unclimbed mountain and name it after a controversial figure.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Old Baldy, upon the top of which no one had ever stood, has been climbed at last. After hard climbing over logs, through narrow passes in the rocks and up over narrow ledges, the party stood at last on the highest pinnacle of Mount Baldy. They discovered that Baldy is not the highest mountain of this spur, but that another peak rose 400 or 500 feet higher. The party reached the summit and began preparations to camp over night. In the morning we beheld a grand panorama—the great Grays Harbor country, the Juan de Fuca straits and Vancouver Island all in view. This mountain was christened Mount Ingersoll, in honor of Col. R. G. Ingersoll. Flagpoles were erected and the party left cans on the mountain tops containing the names of the party: J. N. Locke, Clark Peeler, and Robert M. Locke.
“A single misstep meant death on one side and broken bones on the other.”
Naming a mountain after Robert G. Ingersoll—a famous agnostic and orator—was a bold ideological statement in 1893. Today, these peaks are part of the complex geography of the Olympic Peninsula, serving as a reminder of how settlers projected their political and philosophical heroes onto the unmapped landscape.
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