Whale Mountain is a , summit in the northwestern

Cuyamaca Mountains The Cuyamaca Mountains ( Kumeyaay: ''‘Ekwiiyemak''), locally the Cuyamacas, are a mountain range of the Peninsular Ranges System, in San Diego County, southern California. The mountain range runs roughly northwest to southeast. The Laguna Mount ...

San Diego County, California San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the fi ...

. It is located between

Ramona ''Ramona'' is a 1884 American novel written by Helen Hunt Jackson. Set in Southern California after the Mexican–American War, it portrays the life of a mixed-race Scottish– Native American orphan girl, who suffers racial discrimination and ...

and Santa Ysabel, near Ballena Valley. Ballena takes its name from the mountain, ''ballena'' being Spanish for "whale". The Spanish name was the equivalent of the

Ipai The Kumeyaay, also known as Tipai-Ipai or by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the Unit ...

word ' which also means "whale", and which was their name for the mountain. Whale Mountain is known for being desert-like and containing many desert plants and animals, such as cacti.

References

Mountains of San Diego County, California Cuyamaca Mountains Mountains of Southern California Whales and humans {{SanDiegoCountyCA-geo-stub