You could call this mysterious tale “The ‘Mount’ of Monte Cristo.”

The tallest and most prominent mountain on Weber County’s northeastern border is Monte Cristo Peak. This is popular hunting, snowmobiling, ATV and motorcycle riding territory.

Monte Cristo is a Spanish name that means “Mountain of Christ.”

A key question is, who named this Monte Cristo, a peak reaching 9,148 feet above sea level near a place where the Rich, Cache and Weber county borders come together?

The original namesake of Monte Cristo is a granite island in the Mediterranean Sea, sitting between the west Italian coast and Corsica.

The island became known worldwide when Alexandre Dumas pere’s book “The Count of Monte Cristo” was published in 1845. The story is a fictional tale of a hero who found a treasure there.

Weber’s Monte Cristo, its 10th highest peak, is part of the Monte Cristo mountain range, about 30 miles long and located some 13 air miles northeast of Pineview Reservoir.

Capt. Howard Stansbury was the first white man recorded to have traveled through the Monte Cristo area into Ogden in 1849. But, he didn’t name the mountain.

The book, “Five Hundred Utah Place Names,” by Rufus Wood Leigh, says the peak’s name was originally Monte de Cristo, with today’s name shortened in hybrid fashion. It says there is no known name giver.

The usually masterful book “Utah Place Names,” by John W. Van Cott, lists three theories on how Utah’s Monte Cristo received its name:

1. Gold miners returning from Northern California believed it resembled the Monte Cristo Mountains in California.

2. A road builder in the area read the book “The Count of Monte Cristo” during work breaks and the name stuck.

3. The name was provided by early trappers.

Here’s an examination of those three theories:

1. There is no Monte Cristo mountain or range in California. Yet, there is a Monte Cristo Gold Mine in the San Gabriel Mountains, near Los Angeles. However, that mine only started up in the late 1880s.

(There is a Monte Cristo mountain range in Nevada, near Tonopah.)

Notwithstanding, “Rich Memories,” a book by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, does agree with the gold miner theory, though, for Utah’s Monte Cristo name.

Also, the “Remember My Valley” history book on the Ogden Valley, by LaVerna Burnett Newey, also sides with the gold miners explanation.

2. The next theory is shaky because the highway construction project in the Monte Cristo area, which eventually became Utah Highway 39, was part of a Civilian Conservation Corps project in the 1930s.

Arch McKinnon Jr. led the effort to create a gravel road from Woodruff to the summit in 1931. Today, McKinnon Peak, north of Monte Cristo Peak, is named for him. In 1960, this road was improved and paved.

A Feb. 6, 1912 story in the Ogden Standard-Examiner mentioned Monte Cristo in one of its earliest references. (A Logan newspaper also referred to Monte Cristo in an even earlier, 1908 story.)

Newey, in her Ogden Valley history book, said it was a lumberjack, not a road builder, who carried the “Count of Monte Cristo” book to work.

3. The final theory appears unlikely as most trappers were only in northern Utah during the 1820s to the early 1840s. There’s no record of such a naming.

The evidence then suggests two different, more likely theories:

A. Could the Monte Cristo name be silver and not golden? Could its name correspond to the La Plata silver mine, also in the Monte Cristo area? When discovered in July of 1891, this mine quickly produced a short-lived boom town of hundreds of residents.

This was likely the first time that hundreds of people came through the area. Most were locals, but some were outsiders. And, perhaps that’s when someone referred to the nearby mountains as the Monte Cristo Mountains, possibly having a knowledge of Spanish, if not of the newly found California mine. Then, the title stuck.

After all, “La Plata” is a Spanish name itself. “La” is the feminine in Spanish and “Plata” means silver.

It can be no coincidence that there are two such Spanish names in the Monte Cristo area. They are likely related.

B. Otherwise, the first lumber operations in the Monte Cristo area began in 1882 — before La Plata — and so a lumberjack could have been carrying the “Count of Monte Cristo” book and hence the name of the mountain.

Yet, we may simply never know for absolute sure, as the mysterious tale of “The ‘Mount’ of Monte Cristo” continues …

–Monte Cristo Peak is located between mileposts 43 and 44, to the right of eastbound Highway 39 (closed in the winter). There is a geological marker on the peak, placed there in 1938.

(It is worth noting too that Salt Lake County also has a Monte Cristo Peak, elevation 11,132 feet, located on the north slope of Little Cottonwood Canyon.)

Lynn Arave is a veteran journalist who started writing for newspapers in 1970 at Roy High and for daily papers starting in 1976 with high school game reports for the Standard-Examiner. He has been an avid history researcher for three decades. He can be reached at lynnarave@comcast.net.