In the summer of 1850, when Peter Lassen and a group of prospectors traveled through there, they named the lake and the valley for a sweet dew type substance found on the wild grains. Lassen returned that fall and was accompanied by J. Goldsborough Bruff and several other men in a search of the fabled Gold Lake.  On October 5, 1850, Bruff named it Derby Lake, for his friend George H. Derby, a United States topographical engineer, who at that time was surveying Southern California. In 1943, the Oakland Tribune published an article about Fred Lake’s 1892 dream town of Honey Lake City.  That prompted a question from several readers as to how Honey Lake received its name.  John S. Thomas of Oakland wrote the newspaper and stated: “They call it Honey Lake on account of the honey dew that fall on the borders of the lake.  In haying time, if you lay or stand a pitch fork out all night, the handle in the morning will be as sticky as if it had been rubbed with honey.  However, W. E. Booth of Hayward questioned Thomas’ claim in a letter to the Tribune. They published his response:  “Booth used to live in the Honey Lake Valley and worked on a dairy ranch.  Booth insists that he never saw such phenomenon and never heard the story.  It would seem that if such a phenomenon was the source of the name of the lake and region, it would have been a matter of common experience and knowledge.  The phenomenon of which Mr. Thomas speaks may have been incidental, the sticky handle may have been caused something other than the dew .”

It should be noted for the record that the Hudson Bay fur trappers of the 1830s and 1840s referred to the area as Hot Springs Valley.