" The disease is named tularemia on account of the presence in the blood of the causative organism, Bacterium tularense. This organism was so named by McCoy and Chapin, who discovered it in 1912 as the cause of a fatal epidemic among the ground squirrels in Tulare County, California. Tulare County was so named because that region was once covered with extensive marshy beds of the reed tule, a large variety of bulrush."

Source: JAMA, 84 (25 April 1925): 170.