Mount Saint Helena and Its Russian Name
Near St. Helena, California
To the north, the highest peak on the skyline is Mount Saint Helena, rising more than four thousand feet above sea level. Its name carries a story that reaches all the way to imperial Russia. Before Europeans came, the Wappo called it Kanamota, meaning the human mountain, and Spanish colonists knew the range as the Mayacamas.
Then, in June of eighteen forty one, a Russian scientific party from the coastal colony of Fort Ross climbed to the summit. According to the long told account, they left a copper plate at the top and named the peak for Princess Helena de Gagarin, the wife of Alexander Rotchev, the last commander of Fort Ross, honoring her patron saint Helena. Historians caution that some details of the tale are hard to confirm from the surviving records, but the name endured.
The mountain later gave its name to the town below. It was on this peak that Robert Louis Stevenson spent his honeymoon in an abandoned mine, and much of it is now preserved as a state park that bears his name. On a clear day, from the top, hikers can see the distant Sierra Nevada, the Pacific Coast Ranges, and sometimes even Mount Shasta far to the north.
