The name history is messier than that. The post office here was established in 1893 as "Raynetta" -- named by the postmaster after his son -- and only became "Idyllwild" in 1901. Two local papers disagree about the 1901 change: the Idyllwild Town Crier (May 2013) and the Press-Enterprise (March 2018) trace it to different origins. Single-origin town names are usually the tidy version, not the record.