Islay hill is the southern-most of the nine sisters chain of peaks and hills. It is 777 feet tall.

Its name is derived from the Salinan word yslay or slay (wild cherry or chokecherry).¹

The Rodriguez Adobe, part of the Corral de Piedra Rancho, was built there in 1858.²

In 1987, the Pacifica Corporation, in a poorly-thought-through holiday gesture, cut the brush on the side of the hill into the outline of a Christmas Tree. That unauthorized and illegal scrub-brush-graffiti continued to scar the side of the hill for years after.³

Notes

1. Mark P. Hall-Patton Memories of the land: placenames of San Luis Obispo County EZ Nature Books (1994) pp. 72–73
2. Sharon Lewis Dickerson Mountains of fire: San Luis Obispo County’s famous Nine Sisters—a chain of ancient volcanic peaks EZ Nature Books (1990) pp. 77–79
3. Dickerson, op. cit. p. 106