Black Rock Canyon

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The name "Black Rock Canyon" appears in various places and is sometimes confused with High Rock Canyon.

There is a "Black Rock Canyon" in Pershing County at 4583ft, which is over near I-80.

The GNIS entry for Box Canyon states that a variant name is Black Rock Cañon and that the source is "Soil Conservation Service, Bureau of Soils, Soils maps; various edition dates." Box Canyon is the canyon that goes between a location south of Mud Meadow and High Rock Lake, not to be confused with Fly Canyon to the north. The 1954 Vya 1:250,000 map shows that creek as "Willow Creek"

Black Rock Canyon is mentioned in a 1893 article about the death of Peter Lassen as the site of the deaths and states that after the murders the area was known as Clapper Creek.[1]

Reinhart writes that George W. Riddle reported that the party travelled through High Rock Canyon three days after traversing Black Rock Canyon.[2] However, Riddle does not mention Black Rock Canyon in his 1920 memoirs, he writes "Several days after passing Black Rock we passed through what was then known as High Rock canyon — another marvel of nature."[3]

Fairfield, when writing about the death of Peter Lassen states:

"The circumstances are as follows : There has been a party of men stopping in this valley all winter, to be ready as soon as spring opened to prospect Black Rock Canyon for a supposed silver mine. ".[4]

Ferol Egan's chapter about the Lassen-Clapper murders is titled "An Occurrence at Black Rock Canyon".[5] Egan states that the modern name of the canyon is Clapper Canyon.

References

  1. "Peter Lassen's Death," San Francisco Chronicle, December 3, 1893.
  2. "The Golden Frontier: The Recollections of Herman Francis Reinhart, 1851-1869," Herman Francis Reinhart, 1962.
  3. "[https://archive.org/details/historyearlyday00riddgoog/page/n30/mode/2up?q=%22black+rock%22 History of Early Days in Oregon," George W. Riddle, 1920.
  4. "Fairfield's pioneer history of Lassen County," p. 171, 1916
  5. "Sand In A Whirlwind," Ferol Egan, 2016.