History
The mountains were part of the homeland of the Mojave people for thousands of years.
The late 18th century Spanish explorer and missionary Francisco Garcés crossed the Las Californias Mojave Desert territory with the 1774 Juan Bautista de Anza Expedition from New Spain (Mexico) to Monterey Bay in Alta California, and referred to the Providence and New York Mountains together as the Sierra de Santa Coleta, as considering them one mountain range from western Van Winkle Mountain (California) to eastern Crescent Peak (Nevada) is conceivable. Francisco Garcés crossed through Cedar Canyon, a pass between the New York and Providence Mountains.
19th century pioneer travelers on the Mojave Road found springs and streams in the mountains and "thanked Divine Providence," resulting in the range receiving the present name. Mining in several areas has continued off and on for over a century.
The range became part of the Mojave National Preserve in 1994, under National Park Service conservation and recreation direction.
Read more about this topic: Providence Mountains
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)