JFR,
I found this thread interesting. I fished Oak/Secret on Tuesday. If you compare the Stan Jones and Fish n Map Co. maps they reverse the names of Secret and Oak. A misprint or the result of the confusion in names that you are describing?
That's not a misprint.
Yes, there's a lot of confusion over the names of those two canyons, and it's not only on the Stan Jones and Fish n Map Co's maps. I've got about 10 different maps of the lake, and they are all over the place. On the attached image, I've made a list of where they all land on naming those canyons... To make it easier to follow, I'm calling the skinny little canyon on the west entrance of Oak Bay "Canyon 1", and the wider one in the back of (south side of) Oak Bay "Canyon 2"...
A few interesting things come out of all this. For one, there is no consensus about what to call those two canyons. But it is is clear that the USGS maps, both before and after Lake Powell, call the skinny canyon "Oak Canyon". They don't have a name for the wider canyon. And to them, there is no "Secret" Canyon. National Geographic follows the USGS naming convention. Maybe this is the most "accurate way" to name them, but that's not how other mapmakers (and the public) have seen it.
A few of the maps (Stan Jones and and a couple others) kept the USGS convention for Oak Canyon, but added the name "Secret" to the wider canyon. Not sure why. But it seems that the more common use of the name "Secret" was applied to the narrow canyon, not the one Jones calls "Secret", and several of the maps show that, and switch Oak to the wider canyon. How and why it's hard to say. Your guess is as good as mine.
Michael Kelsey tries something novel in the later editions of his book, acknowledging the USGS name of Oak Canyon, but calling it "Secret" in parentheses because he knows a lot of maps label it that way. He then calls the wider canyon "Little Oak Canyon", the only map to do that. And to add to his own confusing logic, he acknowledges that the earlier editions of his book called the skinny canyon "Secret Canyon".
No wonder everyone was (and still is) confused!!
And just to put an exclamation mark on all this, Katie Lee in her river journals of the mid-1950s, gave the skinny canyon (the only canyon with a mouth at the river) the name "Wishbone Canyon". I actually can understand that name, because the way the canyon entered the river does look a little like the way the forks of a wishbone join. But no one has really called it "Wishbone" since...
I guess we can take a vote...
Personally, I think the name Secret Canyon makes sense for the narrow canyon, but I understand that's not its original name. But it just feels right to me. But one thing's for sure--"Secret" makes no sense at all for the wider canyon... not sure what Stan Jones and others were thinking... there's nothing Secret about it, especially when all the houseboats start jockeying for portion in the back of Oak Bay... And that canyon in the back of Oak Bay just sounds like it should be "Oak Canyon"...
