Talk:Mount Le Conte (Tennessee)

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Contents 1 Same Article.. 2 Who's who in the Le Conte/LeConte family 3 Requested move 3.1 Discussion 4 External links?

[edit] Same Article..

Hello! Recently I wrote an article about a hiking trail along Mount Le Conte. Because of that I decided to add a page on the mountain, which at that time wasn't listed. Well, I added the page, Mount Le Conte, and doing some searching now, just found this page, which is about the same mountain. Even more strange, both of the pages are only about a day old. I'm not sure what the protocol in this situation is, but I suppose just combining the pages would be the best way to go about it. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks, Blinutne 01:13, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes that is very weird. The time difference of only 4 hours in creation time is very ironic... Anyway, I went ahead and merged the two articles already, older one merged into the newer. I copied all of the information and then removed what was redundant and followed the proper redirect methods so the articles are one and the same now. The article may require some more clean up, but I tried my best in the merge. --Phenz 03:57, 24 March 2006 (UTC) Any Comments: Talk

That's pretty good. I do believe LeConte is more commonly used than Le Conte anyway, though I'm not sure what its official name is. I'm going to make a few grammatical changes and add a few small facts, but nothing major. In addition to Alum Cave, I plan to write the pages for the other four trails sometime soon. Thanks for the work you've already done to the page and everything else in the region. Blinutne 04:07, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

The official name is Mount Le Conte: see USGS Geographic Names Information System Feature Detail Report - Mount Le Conte. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 15:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Not to quibble but "The time difference of only 4 hours in creation time is very ironic... " is not irony. It is coincidence...ReverieHikes 10:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Who's who in the Le Conte/LeConte family

The USGS says that the Mount Le Conte in Tennessee is named after Joseph Le Conte. John Le Conte was Joseph's older brother, a medical doctor, chemist and physicist. John Eatton Le Conte (to whom 'John Le Conte' was piped in the article) was Joseph and John's uncle. As 'John Eatton Le Conte' was an officer in the Topographical Corps and did a lot of fieldwork in the southeastern U.S., I suspect he is the one for whom the mountain in Tennessee was named, but the USGS is the only source I've seen that explicitly gives an origin for the name, and we need to stick to published sources. It is clearer that the Mount Le Conte in California was named for Joseph Le Conte. I've given my arguments for using 'Le Conte' rather than 'LeConte' for the family name at Talk:LeConte. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 16:17, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, here (under "The House that Jack Built") is a newsletter written by the Great Smoky Mountain Institute at Tremont that lists a John Le Conte as the mountain's namesake, supposedly due to his help in measuring Clingmans Dome. I also remember reading that it was a younger brother to Joseph that the mountain was named for. I will try to find the source and post it. Blinutne 22:48, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I just found the article in a regional newspaper, The Smoky Mountain News. It does say that John was his older brother, so I am not sure why I had referred to him as younger, but this paper also claims that it is incorrectly assumed to be named for Joseph. The claim is also made in here in the Oak Ridge, Tennessee newspaper, but, since you have to be a (free) registered member to access the article, I will paste it below:

"The Associated Press

Visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains learn that the third-highest mountain in the national park -- Mount LeConte -- was named after conservationist Joseph LeConte.

Maybe not.

It might have been named after Joseph's less-famous older brother, John Le Conte.

Ken Wise, author of several Smokies hiking books and business manager of the University of Tennessee Library, has collected letters and research that he says proves that both official and popular histories of the park are wrong.

The United States Geographic Board endorsed the Joseph tradition, and in so doing, erred not only in honoring Joseph LeConte, but also in giving Arnold Guyot credit for naming the mountain, Wise said in a report published recently in The Journal of East Tennessee History.

The LeConte brothers were both trained physicians who were employed as professors and researchers.

Joseph LeConte was a widely-published scientist and founding member of the Sierra Club, but Wise suggests that he never even saw the mountain with his name.

During the summer of 1858, when the mountain was being measured and explored, the LeConte brothers were in Flat Rock, N.C.

Before his expedition to LeConte, Professor Samuel Botsford Buckley prevailed upon John LeConte to place his barometer at Buckley's service by moving it to Waynesville, N.C.

Wise says Buckley named the mountain after John LeConte.

Guyot later measured LeConte, but confirmed the name originated with Buckley, according to Wise.

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press.

I suggest that the article be reverted back to state John Le Conte as the namesake. Blinutne 23:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I would recommend that the article cite both versions. If we have different versions from reliable sources, we shouldn't choose just one to present. The New Georgia Encyclopedia article on the Le Conte/LeConte family attributes the Tennessee mountain name to John[1], so this would be a better source than a site requiring registration. -- Donald Albury^(Talk) 03:10, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes I suppose it would be better to note the controversy in the naming and I also agree that the New Georgia Encyclopedia is a more noteworthy source.

[edit] External links?

I donno if anyone's clicked on the External links, but they are not exactly reflective of the location of Mount Le Conte. In fact, one of them is actually some point in the ocean off the west coast of Africa. Strange.