Places: CA-Cloud Canyon

Cloud Canyon-7,579' (Sphinx Lakes)   
(36.7074394, -118.5789865)

Description:
This is the cañon of the east fork of Roaring River, erroneously labeled “Deadman Cañon” on many maps. (S.C.B., 1921, XI:2, p. 119.)
“I named it ‘The Cloud Mine’ because the clouds hung so low overhead. At the same time I named the creek Cloud Creek and put the name in my notebook. I often referred to my mine as being up in the clouds. . . . The claim I had recorded on my return to Visalia as the ‘Cloud Claim’.” (Letter from judge William B. Wallace, in S.C.B., 1924, XII:1, pp. 47-48.) The event occurred in 1880. 
  From    Place Names of the High Sierra (1926) by Francis P. Farquhar

Few locales in Kings Canyon National Park have early histories as confused as that of Cloud Canyon. Fortunately, Judge William Wallace wrote a letter in 1924 to the Sierra Club Bulletin that captured and corrected most of these errors.  From Sequoia Parks Foundation

Cloudy Canon we found to differ from Deadman's Canon only in the fact that at its lower end it was more over grown with aspen thickets, and at the upper end the jumps by terraces were rougher. The glacial polishings were seen to great advantage here, in some places so glossy, even on granite, as to shine in the sun like mirrors. Some of the meadows we had to cross proved boggy, some of the ascents full of broken and jagged debris.      From The Pass by Stewart Edward White, chapter Cloudy Canyon

From GNIS: Heads on the north slope of Triple Divide Peak, trends north-northwest to join Deadman Canyon at Moraine Ridge. Also called:

• Cloudy Canyon:  According to the decision card, C.L. Nelson USGS who got the name in 1905.
• Copper Canyon: According to the decision card, Testimony of Lowell C Frost - letters of August 18, 1921 and February 20, 1924. Submits to the final judgement of Sierra Club.
• Deadman Canyon: 

On the decision card:

On the 1905 edition of the Tehipite sheet these canyons were named as the Sierra Club suggests, excepting that the eastern one was called Cloudy instead of Cloud. Mr. C. L. Kelson of the Geological Survey, who surveyed both on the Tehipite Quadrangle and the adjoining portion of the It. Whitney Quadrangle, says that he obtained this name Deadman Ganyon for the canyon described on this card and Cloudy Canyon for the parallel canyon about two miles to the eastward from a local ranger, who was encamped near him and who yearly pastured his cattle in these  canyons. The placing of the Deadman on the eastern canyon and Copper on the western on the 1909 edition of the Tehipite sheet was done on the suggestion of Stuart Edward white through Pres. Roosevelt. This is as Mr. Nelson understood it at the time the changes were ordered. Also the 1924 and 1925 letters clarifying the naming.

Trips:

• June 28, 2014 - Ten day trip along the High Sierra Trail and Colby Pass
•  

References:

•  Sequoia Parks Foundation History of Cloud Canyon
• 
  

Pictures:

•