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Who was Sam Mack?

Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2020 11:53 am
by RSC
Not the basketball player.

My wife and I got back yesterday from Sam Mack meadow and were wondering who Sam Mack Lake and the meadow were named after. Any ideas?
Samuel Joseph Mackie, the geologist? Could this be verified?

Re: Who was Sam Mack?

Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2020 10:01 am
by RSC
Still looking into this. There was a Captain Samuel A. Mack who worked for the Mono County government in 1868. Nothing in Peter Browning's Place Names of the Sierra Nevada.

Re: Who was Sam Mack?

Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2020 3:17 pm
by mort
RSC wrote: Fri Aug 28, 2020 10:01 am Still looking into this. There was a Captain Samuel A. Mack who worked for the Mono County government in 1868. Nothing in Peter Browning's Place Names of the Sierra Nevada.
Also nothing in Marguerite Sowaal's Naming the Eastern Sierra
-m

Re: Who was Sam Mack?

Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2020 4:00 pm
by RSC
The Captain Samuel Mack that I referred to earlier sounds like a possibility to me. He had a son, Senator Maurice Mack of Nevada, and two daughters, Emma and Etta Ann. According to Peter Browning's book, Emma, Emma Lake, and Anna Lake are probably named after the daughters.

Re: Who was Sam Mack?

Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2020 6:27 pm
by Jimr
This stuff is a lot of fun. I spent days trying to find out who Joe Crane was (Joe Crane Lake below Isberg Pass). I never found out, but I learned a lot about Capt. Nathaniel Fish McClure and his men for which many features in the area are named. I did get a hint on the origin of the name. Knoblock Meadow is just below the lake. When I looked at historic USGS maps from the turn of the 20th century, it was labeled Knoblock cabins. What I gleamed from that is that quite a few place names simply come from local names that became established as official names. The Knoblocks were probably shepherds that worked the area before it became a forest reserve. Who knows, Joe Crane may have had ties to the Knoblocks is some way or maybe a miner or trapper that worked the area.
Capt. McClure and his Cavalry was assigned to the area after it became a forest reserve to push out shepherds. McClure, Sadler, Isberg, Ward, etc. were all men in his unit and hold place names assigned by the unit at that time. IIRC, Detachment meadow was named after a detachment that got temporarily lost. A bit of a ribbing by the rest of the unit.

Re: Who was Sam Mack?

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2020 2:07 pm
by oldranger
One of my first backpacking trips in the 50s included a night at Knoblocks Cabin.