Preston Peak (

Karuk The Karuk people are an indigenous people of California, and the Karuk Tribe is one of the largest tribes in California. Karuks are also enrolled in two other federally recognized tribes, the Cher-Ae Heights Indian Community of the Trinidad Ran ...

: keech'íihyan), is a dominant feature of the

Siskiyou Wilderness The Siskiyou Wilderness is a federal wilderness area designated by the passage of the California Wilderness Act of 1984. Originally, the land area was The Northern California Wild Heritage Act of 2006 added for the current total of . All of th ...

in the

Klamath National Forest Klamath National Forest is a United States National Forest, national forest, in the Klamath Mountains and Cascade Range, located in Siskiyou County, California, Siskiyou County in northern California, but with a tiny extension (1.5 percent of the ...

in northern California, U.S. Many peaks in the wilderness rise to over but none come to within of approaching the height of Preston Peak. From the summit on a clear day, the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

is visible along with peaks in the

Klamath Mountains The Klamath Mountains are a rugged and lightly populated mountain range in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon in the western United States. As a mountain system within both the greater Pacific Coast Ranges and the California Coast R ...

and

Cascade Range The Cascade Range or Cascades is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern California. It includes both non-volcanic mountains, such as the North Cascades, ...

. John Hart, in his book ''Hiking the Bigfoot Country'' says of the peak:

Designation

The Forest Service designated the peak and watershed around the peak the ''Preston Peak Botanical and Geological Area'' because of the rare plants and associations of plants that can be found. Here the Alaska cedar and

noble fir ''Abies procera'', the noble fir, also called red fir and Christmas tree, is a species of fir native to the Cascade Range and Pacific Coast Ranges of the northwestern Pacific Coast of the United States. It occurs at altitudes of . Description '' ...

reach the southern terminus of their range and share habitat with the northwest California endemic

Brewer spruce ''Picea breweriana'', known as Brewer spruce, Brewer's weeping spruce, or weeping spruce, is a species of spruce native to western North America, where it is one of the rarest on the continent. The specific epithet ''breweriana'' is in honor of ...

and

Port Orford cedar ''Chamaecyparis lawsoniana'', known as Port Orford cedar or Lawson cypress, is a species of conifer in the genus '' Chamaecyparis'', family Cupressaceae. It is native to Oregon and northwestern California, and grows from sea level up to in th ...

. There is also an interesting population of high-elevation

Pacific yew ''Taxus brevifolia'', the Pacific yew or western yew, is a species of tree in the yew family Taxaceae native to the Pacific Northwest of North America. It is a small evergreen conifer, thriving in moisture and otherwise tending to take the form o ...

on the peak that, along with a few other populations in the Klamath Mountains, may justify reclassification as at least a subspecies. A few other rare plants living on or around the peak are the phantom orchid and Siskiyou fritillary.

References

External links

* * * * {{cite web , url = http://www.summitpost.org/preston-peak/151021 , title = Preston Peak , publisher = Summit Post , accessdate = 2015-12-17 Klamath Mountains Mountains of Siskiyou County, California Mountains of Northern California