Mount Baker was named by George Vancouver after his third lieutenant. Joseph Baker may have been the first on Vancouver’s ship to spot the obvious giant mountain, but he wasn’t even the first European to do so.

A year earlier, the Spanish expedition led by Manuel Quimper had mapped the area and called the peak la gran montaña del Carmelo.

If either explorer had cared to ask the indigenous groups they were around, they might have recognized Mount Baker by the name kwelshan, the term used by the Lhaq’temish (Lummi) people around Bellingham and the San Juan Islands, or swáʔləx̣, reportedly used by the nəxʷsƛ̕áy̕əm̕ (Klallam) people on the Olympic Peninsula.

The mountain itself is surrounded by the traditional lands of the Nooksack and Upper Skagit peoples. The Nooksack use kwelshán for the high open slopes of the mountain and kweq’ smánit for the glacier-covered summit.