Saranac Lakers familiar with local history may know that Mt. Baker had a speakeasy at its base during Prohibition. But how many know for whom the gentle peak was named, and its connection to the famed British author Robert Louis Stevenson?

Venturing further afield in the orbit of Adirondack mountain names, what does “Dippikill” mean? Is “Santanoni” Italian, or French? And which mountain is named for an iconic martyr of the U.S. Civil Rights movement of the 1960s?

These and an array of similar questions are answered in Robert C. Lawrence’s book “What’s With Those Adirondack Mountain Names?” (Troy Book Makers, 2021, 152 pages softcover).

Lawrence, a Watertown native and retired educator who currently lives in Saratoga Springs, has had a lifelong interest in the Adirondacks. As to how this book came about, he explains, “My wife and I were kayaking on Lake Durant, watching loons (interact) with their young. Suddenly, Carol Ann asked, ‘Why is that mountain above us called Blue?’ We went to the [Adirondack Experience] museum to find a book on the topic, and there were none. So I wrote one.”

The book is arranged alphabetically by mountain name, from Adams through Calamity and Puffer to Wright. Lawrence limits himself to most of the Adirondacks’ hundred highest, the Saranac Six and Tupper Lake Triad, and selected others. It’s his book, so he can do what he wants with it, but it’s not clear how he “selected” these “others.” And so we have Cliff and Iroquois and Snowy, whose name origins should be obvious, but not the alluring Azure. Originally Blue Mountain, forest fire fighters kept confusing it with the Blue Mountain that inspired this book. So about 100 years ago some state bureaucrat arbitrarily changed it to Azure. But if you want to find its trailhead, you have to locate Blue Mountain Road near St. Regis Falls. Locals, no more keen on Albany dictates then than they are now, have never accepted the imposed change.

Given all of this, a more accurate title for Lawrence’s book might employ “Some” instead of “Those.”

Be that as it may, Lawrence explains how, when and by whom his chosen summits were named. He also indicates when a mountain’s naming (“oronymy,” if you want to dazzle folks at a cocktail party) cannot be verified. It seems a waste of space to include those whose oronymy is unknown (Sunrise) or derivative (South Dix, “just another mountain named for [Gov.] John Dix”) while skipping, say, our friend Azure. And it’s curious that in a book about mountain names, two of the selections are “Unnamed Peak.”

It needs to be acknowledged that the book contains other errors, both typographical and factual. For instance, the legendary Keene Valley guide Orson Schofield “Old Mountain” Phelps variously appears as “Old Man Mountain Phelps” and just plain dismissive “Old Man Phelps.”

All that aside, the book is entertaining and educational. Just don’t consider it definitive.

And Mt. Baker? It was named for an early prominent family in the area, in one of whose cottages Stevenson spent one miserable winter while battling TB under the care of the Trudeau enterprise. As for Dippikill and so on, you’ll have to read the book.

This review was expanded from a brief notice that appeared in the November-December 2022 issue of “Adirondac,” the magazine of the Adirondack Mountain Club, Inc.