How two peaks in the San Jacinto Mountains came to be named after women – Press Enterprise

Marion Mountain and Jean Peak in the San Jacinto Mountains were named for two women, one who was supposedly disappointed in love and the other who was not.

The story starts in 1897 when Edmond Taylor Perkins was sent by the U.S. Geological Survey to map the mountains for the first time.

According to Jane Davies Gunther, in her book, “Riverside County, California, Place Names,” Perkins was a tall, good looking man. He was in his early 30s at the time. Perkins was energetic and had proven he could work by himself in difficult conditions. By 1897, he had already spent a number of years in Idaho, doing the first topographic surveys ever done of the southwest and central portions of the then Idaho Territory. Perkins had both undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering.

While doing his survey work in the San Jacinto Mountains, Perkins met a group of young people camped near today’s Pine Cove. Among them was Marion Kelly of White Cloud, Michigan. At that time, Kelly was employed as a teacher by the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Morongo Reservation.

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According to Gunther, the story is that Kelly fell in love with the handsome topographer, but he didn’t feel the same and told her he was married to his work. However, Perkins did name a mountain peak for her, and so it became Marion Mountain.

Perkins seemed to have had feelings for another young woman on his mind, Jean Waters, of Plumas County. He met her when he had done survey work in Northern California. He put this young woman’s name on an adjacent mountain, and it was called Jean Peak.

Marion was to be disappointed in her love for Perkins.

Perkins did get the woman he longed for, and Kelly and Perkins were married in Los Angeles in 1903. When the U.S. Geological Survey issued the San Jacinto Quadrangle map in 1901, on it were two mountains named Marion and Jean.