Mount Magazine - Name

Name

The mountain gets its name from when French explorers were traveling through the area and a landslide occurred on the mountain. The noise from the landslide was so great that one explorer described it as the sound of an ammunition magazine exploding. The explorers then named the mountain "Magazine".

The Geographic Names Index System (GNIS) of the USGS indicates that the official name of this feature is Magazine Mountain, not "Mount Magazine". Although not a hard and fast rule, generally "Mount Xxxxx" is used for a peak, and "Xxxx Mountain" is more frequently used for ridges, which better describes this feature. Magazine Mountain appears in the GNIS as a ridge, with Signal Hill identified as its summit. "Mount Magazine" is the name used by the Arkansas State Parks and Recreation Administration, which follows what the locals have used since the area was first settled. All four of the guidebooks published to date on the subject of state highpoints have used Magazine Mountain.

The mountain is often called "the highest point between the Alleghenies and the Rockies" but there are areas in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota with higher elevations.