Siskiyou County

SISKIYOU. County seat, Yreka. Created March 22, 1852, and named after the mountain range. The origin of the word siskiyou is not known. One version is that it is the Chinook Indian word for "bob-tailed horse." Another version, given in an argument before the state Senate in 1852, is that the French name Six Callieux, meaning "six-stone," was given to a ford on the Umpqua River by Michel La Frambeau and a party of Hudson's Bay company trappers in 1832, because six large stones or rocks lay in the river where they crossed. Still others attribute the name to a local tribe of Indians.