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206 Utah Historical Quarterly does the great colonizer honor at the same time. Bern and Geneva in the Bear Lake country, on the other hand, reflect the homeland of Swiss settlers. Paris, however, is a corruption of Perris, the name of one of its founders rather than a reflection of French settlers or the city of Paris.28 This notwithstanding, multiple influences may be conjectured in some place names. Would Hyde Park, for example, reflect the prominence of founder William Hyde, the English origins of many of the tow7n's inhabitants, and the role of London's Hyde Park in Mormon missionary lore? Like towns, farm and livestock districts came to have names. Toponce Creek was named for the prominent freighter and stockman, while Gentile Valley took its name from early stockmen w7ho made a determined effort to exclude Mormons that included the establishment of a post office that would not accept mail addressed to Mound Valley—the Mormon name.29 This w7as apparently as much a reaction of ranchers against squatters as it was non-Mormons against Mormons. As latecomers, sheepmen, too, were sometimes made the butt of jokes that manipulated place names. The object of such a story was Frank Robertson, a western w7riter who in his youth herded sheep in the Bancroft area west of Soda Springs. His cowboy brother never ceased to needle him and frequently related a story in which a stranger met Frank and asked "where are you from Shep?" "Baa-a-ancroft," young Robertson is supposed to have replied. "Well, where are you going now7?" "Baa-a-ck" was his response.30 By and large, Bear River place names are utilitarian. Chosen to give character to communities, they lacked color and imagination and suggest that, at the point of town-making at least, the opening of the Bear River country was serious business indeed. It would appear that Gentile and Mormon, squatter and cattleman, and land agent and freighter alike responded to similar impulses when they named their towns. If village names reveal a difference in community character, it is geographic rather than social. Bear Lake's tendency to take itself a little less seriously is apparent here as well as in the people it produced. Who could imagine, for example, Cache Valley lowering its decorum, even if there were reasons valid and substantial, to name towns Pickleville and Dingle? If one doubts that Cache Valley might have balked at such names no matter how valid "s Beal, A History of Southeastern Idaho, p. 178. 29 Not everyone agrees that this account is based in fact but it is discussed in Beal, A History of Southeastern Idaho, pp. 184-85, 4 1 0 ; and Vivian Simmons and R u t h Varley, "Gems" of Our Valley: A Written and Pictorial History of Gem Valley (Providence, U t . : Watkins and Sons, n . d . ) , pp. 14-16. 30 Frank C. Robertson, A Ram in the Thicket: The Story of a Roaming Home-Steader Family on the Mormon Frontier (New York: Hastings House Publishers, 1959), p. 248.