ALABAMA HILLS [Inyo Co.]. The term was applied by Southern sympathizers in 1863, after the Confederate raider Alabama sank the Union warship Hatteras off the coast of Texas.
ALAMAR (al uh MAHR) CANYON [Santa Barbara Co.]. From the Spanish for “place of poplar (or cottonwood) trees,” from álamo, “poplar (or cottonwood).”
ALAMBIQUE (al uhm BEEK) CREEK [San Mateo Co.]. From the Spanish for “still,” a place where liquor is distilled. Moonshiners, it seems, once worked in the area.
ALAMEDA (al uh MEE duh). Spanish for “grove of poplar (or cottonwood) trees,” from álamo, “poplar (or cottonwood),” or for a grove of shade trees in general. The term dates from 1794; it was applied to the city and to Alameda County in 1853.
ALAMILLA (ah luh MEE yuh) SPRING [Amador Co.]. Not from álamo. Rather, it was named by José María Amador in 1826, when he built his adobe house about a mile—a la milla, “at the mile”—west of the spring.
ALAMITOS (al uh MEE tuhs) BAY [Los Angeles Co.]. From the Spanish for “little poplars (or cottonwoods),” the diminutive of álamo.
ALAMO (AL uh moh) [Contra Costa Co.]. The town takes its name from Spanish álamo, “poplar (or cottonwood).” The Alamo River [Imperial Co.] is one of the many places in the desert regions named for the Fremont cottonwood (Populus fremontii), which promised water to the thirsty wanderer. Alamorio (al uh muh REE oh) [Imperial Co.] is on the Alamo River; the name is coined from álamo plus Spanish río, “river.” The plural form, álamos, occurs in the name of Los Alamos [Santa Barbara Co.].
ALBANY [Alameda Co.]. Named after the New York State birthplace of Frank J. Roberts, the town’s first mayor.
ALBERHILL (al ber HIL) [Riverside Co.]. Coined from the surnames of C. H. Albers and James and George Hill, owners of the land on which the town was built about 1890.
ALBION (AL bee uhn) [Mendocino Co.]. In 1579, Sir Francis Drake landed on the northern California coast and called it New Albion. This ancient name for Britain, from Latin albus, “white,” originally referred to the white cliffs of Dover. The term was applied to the Mendocino location in 1844.
ALCATRAZ (AL kuh traz) [San Francisco Co.]. From the Spanish for “pelican.” The island has been famous first as a federal prison, then as a site of American Indian activism, and now as a museum.
ALESSANDRO (al uh ZAN droh) [Riverside Co.]. Named in 1887 after the Indian hero in Helen Hunt Jackson’s romantic novel Ramona. Jackson perhaps confused Alessandro, the Italian equivalent of Alexander, with the Spanish Alejandro.
ALGODONES (al guh DOH nuhs) [Imperial Co.]. Derived from the name of a Yuman tribe that once lived on both sides of the Colorado River; they were called halchidóom by the neighboring Mojave tribe. (The term is not from Spanish algodón, “cotton.”)
ALHAMBRA (al HAM bruh) [Los Angeles Co.]. Laid out in 1874 and named for the Moorish palace in Granada, Spain, made popular by Washington living’s book The Alhambra. But Alhambra Valley [Contra Costa Co.] is a “prettying up” of Spanish Cañada del Hambre, “valley of hunger.”
ALISAL (AL uh sal) [Monterey Co.]. From the Spanish for “alder grove,” from aliso, “alder” (also sometimes applied to the sycamore). El Alisal, the Los Angeles home of the writer Charles Lummis, is now a museum.
ALISO (uh LEE soh) CREEK [Orange Co.]. From the Spanish for “alder (or sycamore).”
ALLEGHANY (AL uh gay nee) [Sierra Co.]. Named after the Alleghany Mine of the 1850s. The name goes back to the Delaware (Algonquian) name for the Allegheny River of Pennsylvania, perhaps meaning “beautiful stream.”
ALMADEN (al muh DEN) [Santa Clara Co.]. The site of a cinnabar mine, from which mercury was produced; it was named in 1846 after Almadén in Spain, the world’s largest such mine. California Indians used the cinnabar ore for body paint.
ALMANOR (AL muh nawr) LAKE [Plumas Co.]. Named after Alice, Martha, and Elinore, the daughters of Guy C. Earl, president of the power company that created this reservoir in 1917.
ALPINE [San Diego Co.]. The name was suggested in the 1880s by an early resident who said the district resembled her native Switzerland. Alpine County, also named for its mountainous terrain, was created in 1864 from parts of five adjacent counties; it had previously been considered part of Nevada. It now has the smallest population of any California county.
ALTA. The Spanish adjective meaning “high” or “upper” has always been a favorite in California place-naming, as in Alta California, “upper California,” the term that the Spanish used in distinction to Baja California. But many names were applied in American times, such as Altaville [Calaveras Co.]; Altamont [Alameda Co.], scene of a notorious Rolling Stones concert in 1969; and Alta Loma [San Bernardino Co.], meaning “high hill.” Altadena (al tuh DEE nuh) [Los Angeles Co.] was coined in 1886 from alta plus the last part of Pasadena, because of the town’s situation above Pasadena.
AL TAHOE [El Dorado Co.]. From the Al Tahoe Hotel, built in 1907 by Almerin R. Sprague and named for himself—Al(merin’s) Tahoe hotel.
ALTURAS (al TOOR uhs) [Modoc Co.]. Formerly called Dorrisville, the town was renamed in 1876 from the Spanish word meaning “heights,” from alto, “high.”
ALVARADO (al vuh RAH doh) [Alameda Co.]. Named in 1853 in honor of Juan Bautista Alvarado, governor of California from 1836 to 1842. A major street in Los Angeles also bears his name.
ALVISO (al VEE soh) [Santa Clara Co.]. Named in 1849 for Ignacio Alviso, who had come to the area from Mexico with the Anza expedition in 1776.
AMADOR (AM uh dohr) COUNTY. Named in 1854 for José María Amador, who came to California as a soldier in the Spanish garrison of San Francisco and became a big landowner. Amador City was founded in 1863 and named after the county.
AMARGOSA (am er GOH suh) RIVER [Death Valley N.P.]. From Spanish amargoso, “bitter” (an alternate form of amargo); the name was recorded by Frémont in 1844 and probably refers to alkaline water.
AMAYA (uh MAH yuh) CREEK [Santa Cruz Co.]. On land owned around 1860 by two Californio brothers, Casimero and Darío Amaya.
AMBOY [San Bernardino Co.]. Named as one of a series of railroad stations in alphabetical order: Amboy, Bristol, Cadiz, Danby, Edson, Fenner, and Goffs. All these names were probably taken from locations “back east.”
AMERICAN RIVER [Placer, El Dorado, Sacramento Cos.]. The name was given by Sutter in the 1840s, because a ford in the river was called El Paso de los Americanos, “the crossing of the
