Thursday, January 8, 1970

Place: CA-Hockett Meadow



Hockett Meadow (quad)
 (36°22′35.6658″N 118°39′20.4444″W)

Description:
John Benjamin Hockett (1828-1898), born at Fort Smith, Arkansas; a pioneer of Tulare County, camping at what was later Porterville as early as 1849; settled in Visalia, 1859; ran cattle in Kern Cañon as early as 1861, and was probably the first white man to visit the head of the cañon; built the trail which bears his name, 1862-1864. (Chester Versteeg, from Gus Walker of Olancha, and Mrs. J. B. Hockett.)

“Although this is one of the oldest trails into the mountains, it is the roughest. Both the Hockett and Jordan trails were ‘built’ for the purpose of diverting the travel to the mines of Inyo County from the Walker Pass. According to the ‘franchises’ that were granted for the construction and operation of these two toll-trails, they were intended to be converted into wagon-roads as soon as possible; but the collapse of the Inyo mining boom in the early ’60s defeated the enterprise, and no attempt was ever made to build any part of a road through the rough mountains.” (P. M. Norboe: Trails into the Mt. Whitney and Kern River Regions, in Mt. Whitney Club Journal, 1903, no. 2, p. 67.)
Place Names of the High Sierra (1926) by Francis P. Farquhar

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