Mount
Princeton

The Wheeler Survey first labeled the peak Chalk Mountain, for the white kaolinite Chalk Cliffs at its base along Chalk Creek; other early maps called it Princeton Mountain before the name settled. Survey topographer Henry Gannett, a Harvard graduate, is credited with the modern name, part of a wave of Ivy League names the surveyors gave the range's summits, including nearby Yale and Harvard.

The first recorded ascent came on July 17, 1877, when the Princeton graduate William Libbey reached the summit during the Princeton Scientific Expedition, a student research trip west. Libbey, later a Princeton professor of physical geography, is also credited with originating the university's orange and black colors. Rival Yale alumni reportedly piled summit rocks for years afterward trying to out-elevate Princeton's roughly one-foot lead.