The Merced River flows for 145 miles, from the spectacular beauty of Yosemite Valley all the way to Hills Ferry west of Livingston, where the Merced meets the San Joaquin. But how and when did the river did it get its name? Today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots we look back at the names that have graced this waterway.
We have Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga to credit for giving us the river’s modern name, and we’ll get to that in a moment. But this story begins much earlier. Native Americans have lived in Yosemite Valley for thousands of years. They were known the Ahwahneechee, and their village was Ahwahnee, meaning gaping mouth-like place. They were branch of the Southern Sierra Miwok tribe. The Ahwahneechee called the river that runs through Yosemite Valley Wa-kal-la.
Of course, they weren’t the only tribe to encounter the Merced River. In the 1840s, John C. Fremont encountered the river in the San Joaquin Valley, and reported that another tribe called it the Auxumne.
However, as with many valley places, the names given to prominent features by Spanish colonial forces are the ones we know today. In September of 1806, forced led by Moraga camped along the Merced River. It was five days after the feast day for Our Lady of Mercy, so Moraga named the river El Rio De Nuestra Senora de la Merced. It was eventually shorted to Merced, and later adopted by the county and a city we know today.
