[1][2] While much of the northern part of the Coso Range is within the Coso Range Wilderness protected area, administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Coso Peak itself and much of the southern part of the range is within the boundaries of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, a U.S. Navy research, testing, and evaluation installation.

It may be from the Timbisha or Panamint language of the Native American tribes indigenous to the Owens Valley and Death Valley region since prehistoric times, in which kosoowa or kosoowah was "be steamy," possibly referring to the hot springs (which Jon P. Dayley's Tümpisa (Panamint) Shoshone Dictionary says were called Kooso and the people from there koosotsi).

are also known and referenced as a Mono (or Paiute, though this is not really accurate because those groups are not contiguous) word in some dialects for 'fire'.

[7] The name Coso Mountains appears on an official State Geological Survey of California map from 1874; in 1913 the U.S. Geological Survey officially named them the Coso Range.

[7] Coso Peak itself appears by 1877 on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers map.