IT HAPPENED LAST Friday – at roughly 3 p.m. on September 15th: the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (the federal board within the U.S. Department of Interior which has the final say on the renaming of all natural features on public lands) voted to rename the closest fourteener to Denver.
The mountain that probably went by many different names before recorded history, that was once referred to as ‘Ceneeteese’ (the Arapaho word for ‘misty’), then Mount Rosalie (named after a woman who never saw the mountain), then Mount Evans (to honor Colorado’s second governor, who we now know was culpable in the genocide of Colorado’s indigenous people), now bears the name ‘Mount Blue Sky’.
The journey to rename the mountain has been years long. But the ancestors of those massacred at Sand Creek in 1864, who have been campaigning for the name change though the group the Mestaa’éhehe Coalition, have finally achieved their goal: removing the name of the man responsible for the murder of their forebears.
It’s sadly clear from the immediate response online to the renaming that not everyone will use the new name at first – or ever. Some won’t understand why the change has been made – and won’t genuinely try to. Some will resist it, some will mock both the name and those who fought for it, some will merely be indifferent, some will agree with the change but consider the new name too generic or not representative of what the mountain truly is… but many will accept it, and many will celebrate it. Either way, the new name is now official.
For my part, to publicly accept and celebrate it, here are a few photos from on (and around) the mountain, all taken this year. This is a mountain I’ve visited many times over the past two decades and have spent a great deal of time this year getting to know really well. Here is Mount Blue Sky then, in only a select few of its many, many moods:
