Bloody Canyon-7,224' (Mount Dana)
(37.8949271, -119.1273702)
Description:
“It is very steep and rough; the name is suggestive of the disagreeable effects of the sharp edges of the slates on the legs of the unfortunate animals driven over it.” (Whitney Survey: Geology, 1865, p. 436.)
“It was known and traveled as a pass by wild animals and the Indians long before its discovery by white men in the gold year of 1858, as is shown by old trails which come together at the head of it. The name may have been suggested by the red color of the metamorphic slates in which the cañon abounds, or by the blood-stains on the rocks from unfortunate animals that were compelled to slide and shuffle over the sharp-angled boulders.” (Muir: My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911, p. 289. —See, also, Picturesque California, edited by John Muir, 1888, vol. I, pp. 24, 28.)
From PlaceNames of the High Sierra (1926) by Francis P. Farquhar
After crossing the pass, the way leads down Bloody Canyon—a terrible trail. You would all pronounce it utterly inaccessible to horses, yet pack trains come down, but the bones of several horses or mules and the stench of another told that all had not passed safely. The trail comes down three thousand feet in less than four miles, over rocks and loose stones, in narrow canyons and along by precipices. It was a bold man who first took a horse up there. The horses were so cut by sharp rocks that they named it “Bloody Canyon,” and it has held the name—and it is appropriate—part of the way the rocks in the trail are literally sprinkled with blood from the animals.
From Up and Down California by William Brewer, Book 4, Chapter 4
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