History
The Mojave people, Cahuilla people, Quechan, and other Native American cultural tribes and groups lived in and traveled through the Whipples for thousands of years.
Francisco Garcés, the explorer, missionary, and regional "peacemaker" based at Mission San Xavier del Bac had initiated expeditions along the river and surrounding terrain through and past the Whipples in the early 1770s. In 1774 he joined the famous Juan Bautista de Anza Las Californias Expedition from "mainland New Spain to the "new to them" Alta California. They passed through the range en route to the Needles area and onwards inland, traveling in peace with the local indigenous people west of the river. In the early 1900s Wyatt Earp spent his last winters here working small gold and copper mining claims, starting around 1906. The nearby townsite of Earp, California on and near those claims was named for him, although his residence actually stands in the town of Vidal, California.
Currently, portions of the range within and without the Whipple Mountains Wilderness Area are owned by the State of California or private land owners. Access to these areas is not by the BLM, but the other owners and agencies.
Read more about this topic: Whipple Mountains
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)