368 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



ment is now, 1894, doing a similar work at Arequipa, Peru, at a station 

 8,050 feet above sea level — over 2,000 feet higher than Mount Wilson. 

 [See article "Wilson's Trail" for account of how the instrument was 

 trundled up to Mount Wilson.] This point was often spoken of as Wilson's 

 Peak ; but the highest part of Mount Wilson lies about a mile farther east, 

 toward a crag called Echo Rock, which looks down a tremendous precipice 

 into a branch of Santa Anita canyon. The telescope site was formerly 

 called "Signal Peak," as I find it described in the Pasadena Valley Unio7i 

 of May 21, 1886, which says: 



"The high point or peak of mountain visible from Pasadena which 

 forms the summit at the head of the oid Wilson trail is known as ' Signal 

 Peak,' from its long use by parties who had climed that trail making a fire 

 there in the evening to signal their friends below that they had arrived safely 

 at the top." 



The Mount Wilson Toll Road Company has converted the observatory 

 building into a series of guest rooms called " Observatory Casino, " which 

 forms an Annex to their Mount Wilson Camp resort for invalids and 

 tourists. 



PrECipicio Peak. — From the summit of Mount Wilson, or Harvard 

 Point, there extends westward a long, narrow stretch of mountain crest> 

 including what is called "Knife-Blade Ridge," and terminating at Precipicio 

 Peak, from whose top the visitor looks down southwardly into a gulf of 

 steep, precipitous and terrifying depth called " Eaton Canyon," although its 

 official or recorded name is Precipicio Canyon, which was its old Spanish 

 name. On the north side he looks down a more gradual and wooded slope, 

 though quite as deep, into the west fork of the great San Gabriel canyon 

 and its historic river. And on the west side he looks down into a heavily 

 wooded deep valley or mountain gap which forms a sort of pass from Eaton 

 canyon through to West San Gabriel canyon, and is the great gulf ot 

 separation between the Mount Wilson and the Mount Eowe systems of 

 adjunct peaks, ridges, spurs, etc. The Precipicio peak and the sharp ridge 

 leading to it are plainly seen from Pasadena, and have a little historic asso- 

 ciation which I quote from a document of the time, October, 1891 : 



"Dr. and Mrs. Reid clambered all day over craggy peaks, and along 

 spaces thickly strewn with sharp, angular fragments of rocks, and through 

 thorny chapparal, and through a small but grand pine grove, and for several 

 rods along the crest of a dividing ridge [the "Knife-Blade," as John Muir 

 called it] so narrow that they could stand erect and from either hand on op- 

 posite sides drop a stone that would plunge down 2,000 feet before it could 

 strike anything which might stop its downward course. Mrs. Reid [then over 

 65 years old] went nearly two miles farther on this difficult line than any 

 woman had ever gone before." 



Since Echo Mountain and Mt. Lowe came into such pre-eminent fame, 

 men have crossed a few times between them and Mt. Wilson, following 



