A.H. Sylvester

Albert Hale Sylvester
Albert H. Sylvester and his wife Alice
Born	May 25, 1871 San Mateo, California, United States
Died	September 14, 1944(1944-09-14) (aged 73) Wenatchee, Washington, United States

Albert Hale Slyvester (May 25, 1871 – September 14, 1944) was a pioneer surveyor, explorer, and forest supervisor in the Cascade Range of the U.S. state of Washington. He was a topographer for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in the Snoqualmie Ranger District between 1897 and 1907. Then, from 1908 to 1931, he served the United States Forest Service as the first forest supervisor of Wenatchee National Forest. His work involved the first detailed surveying and mapping of large portions of the Cascade Range in Washington, over the course of which he gave names to over 1,000 natural features. The surveying work often required placing cairns and other survey targets on top of mountains. He made the first ascents of a number of mountains in Washington. Over the course of his career he explored areas previously unknown to non-indigenous people. One such area, which Sylvester discovered, explored, and named, is The Enchantments. In 1944, while leading a party of friends to one of his favorite parts of the mountains, Sylvester was mortally wounded when his horse panicked and lost his footing on a steep and rocky slope.

He once wrote that of all the many places he had explored and visited in the Cascades he thought the most beautiful was the Buck Creek area, near Buck Creek Pass at the crest of the Cascades in northeast Chelan County. Buck Creek flows southeast to the Chiwawa River.

Albert H. Sylvester named over 1,000—perhaps as many as 3,000 natural features in the Cascade Range, including Enchantment Lakes, Dishpan Gap, Lake Margaret, Lake Mary, Lake Florence, Lake Flora, Kodak Peak, the "Poets' Ridge" peaks Irving, Poe, Longfellow, Bryannt, and Whittier. Of the Enchantment Lakes area, now a very popular backpacking destination known as The Enchantments, he wrote, "it was an enchanting scene. I named the group Enchantment Lakes."

During his career the region between Snoqualmie Pass and the North Cascades, where he did most of his work, was frequently updated with new maps showing the results of ongoing USGS and Forest Service surveying and exploring. This made it possible for Sylvester's place names to become well established and used. His prolific place naming was due in part to Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the Forest Service. During the Pinchot era national forests were relatively new and often largely unmapped and lacking in place names. In order to better protect the forests from wildfire it was necessary to have names for natural features and detailed maps so that fires could be located by name and fire fighters sent to the right places. In regions like the Wenatchee National Forest there were a large number of unnamed features. Significant parts of the mountains were essentially unexplored, except by Native Americans and, in some areas, prospectors, who tended to be secretive about their discoveries. Thus Sylvester found himself exploring and mapping a large region with relatively few established names and what amounted to a mandate to bestow names.