By Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright

Recently we've been hearing about the "She-DISK-y" wildfire. Radio and TV commentators new to the Southwest, and even those who've been here a long time, had not heard of this remote spot in Arizona until a devastating wild fire broke out there in June. Their guesses at pronunciation were sometimes wild and funny. Just as newly arrived newscasters have usually said "Mongolian" when talking about Arizona's Mogollon Rim Country. Of course most of us forgive them because we also mispronounced these words (if we pronounced them at all) when we first came to Arizona.

Consulting Will C. Barnes' Arizona Place Names, we find that the Mogollon Rim, pronounced, "Mug-ee-yown" may have been "named for Don Juan Ignacio Flores de Mogollon, Captain General of New Mexico, 1712 -1715." Barnes also notes that the word mogollon means "hanger-on, a parasite" in Spanish. Could the mistletoe in the junipers across middle Arizona have anything to do with the name Mogollon? At any rate, the massive Mogollon Rim which separates our state, north and south, is a two hundred mile escarpment which starts with the Grand Wash Cliffs in the west and slants in a southeasterly direction, clear across the state into New Mexico. In Arizona, it defines the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau 

Byrd Granger, in Arizona's Names; X Marks the Place, (her 1983 revision of Barnes' book) spends considerable space trying to clarify the origin of the names in this region. She begins with Father Garces, who in the journal of his 1775 expedition, referred to the Sierra de Mogollon. Granger is amused at Frederick Dellenbaugh, the painter who had accompanied John Wesley Powell on his second voyage down the Colorado River a hundred years later. "Dellenbaugh," she notes, "apparently had more ability to write than to see, described the Mogollon Buttes as "swimming like ocean birds in the blue of the pure Arizona atmosphere . . ." On early maps the White Mountains, which we heard about so much during the Rodeo and Chediski wild fires, are actually an extension of the Mogollon Rim. 

Most apropos of all, Granger closes this entry with, "Cowboys casually call The Rim by a name which might well apply to this entire entry: Muggy yawn." Enough said. 

Now, back to Chediski. This Apache name for a small mountain on the Fort Apache Reservation means "long white rock." Barnes didn't try for a pronunciation, but later editions of Arizona Place Names give a phonetic pronunciation which comes close to "tzedez-k'ay" So those who say CHE-dis-KI are closest to the original. 

What about other place names on the Rim? Everybody knows that Show Low was named by the turn of a card. And some newscasters mentioned that Heber and Overgaard were named for Mormon pioneers. 

Apparently Overgaard was not even there when Barnes' book of place names was published in 1935. However, Granger's 1983 edition says, "This location was named for the Overgaard family. Christ Overgaard served as postmaster in 1939." 


Heber does have Mormon beginnings. First settled in the 1880's by Mormon emigrants from Arkansas. Granger gives two possible sources for the name: either Heber C. Kimball, Chief Justice of the State of Deseret, or, according to a second source, for Heber J. Grant, President of the Mormon Church. 

Eagar, the evacuation center which was so much in the news, was named not because it was enthusiastic, but for the three Mormon Eagar brothers who settled there. 

The other evacuation center, Payson, was founded as Union Park, locally called Green Valley and eventually named after Senator Louis E. Payson, Chairman of the Congressional Committee on Post Offices, who helped establish the post office there. 

Clay Springs was named for a clay tank and such names as Pine, Pinedale, Timberline, Forest Lakes, and Lakeside are self-explanatory. 

Pinetop was first named Penrod for the Mormon family who settled there and still lives there. However, the soldiers at Fort Apache who frequented the saloon called the place Pinetop, which was their nickname for a saloonkeeper. The town is in the pines, near the top of the mountains, so Pinetop became its accepted name. 

Place names certainly are intriguing--bet you can't look up just one. 

(Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright, retired librarian from Yavapai College, is active in Prescott Art Docents and Sharlot Hall Museum. She enjoys investigating the historic confluences of the arts and sciences.) 



Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (pb029a9n1). Reuse only by permission.
At the far right of this image one can see visitors enjoying the view of the Mogollon Rim county in 1903. The story behind the place names that have been appearing in the news with the Rodeo-Chediski the last two weeks have history reaching back to Mormon settlers, the Spanish explorers and possibly earlier.