Although there are modern intrusions (a road and communications facilities on the summit), the mountain is important to the Kumeyaay community's belief system.

The old papistic worship.

A few spindly trees cling to the sides of the gorge, but their roothold on the tiny patches of soil gathered in cracks is precarious.

[…] for at an election meeting in East Maitland in 1845 William Lipscomb, the local wit, said of the squatters that 'so far from being wealthy, they had produced more Billy Barlows than any other class'.