Mount Shasta: From Strawberry Valley to Sisson to Here

The city at the base of California's great volcano has gone by three names. Pioneers called the meadow Strawberry Valley. When the post office required something less common, it became Berryvale.

Then in eighteen eighty-six a businessman named Justin Hinckley Sisson donated land for a station to the Central Pacific Railroad, and the grateful town renamed itself Sisson. Sisson had operated a stagecoach inn and tavern here, and his gift brought the railroad, which in turn brought tourists, loggers, and a tourist economy built around the mountain. The city incorporated in nineteen oh five.

For nearly two more decades the city was still officially Sisson. Then a vote in nineteen twenty-two led to the rename, finalized in nineteen twenty-five for the mountain everyone already used as a landmark. Mount Shasta, California, a town named after a volcano, had finally caught up with its own geography.