Could another prominent Front Range peak get a new name? Not yet.
The Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board on Jan. 27 declined to advance a proposal to change the name of Longs Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park to Beaver Mountain.
The proposal landed more than two years after the federal government approved the state’s request to change Mount Evans to Mount Blue Sky after advocates spent years pointing out former Colorado Gov. John Evans’ role in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre.
The 15-member board in charge of reviewing geographic name changes in Colorado on Tuesday swiftly declined to approve a proposal to remove Stephen Harriman Long’s name from the 14,256-foot peak first named by the federal U.S. Board on Geographic Names in 1911. The Longs Peak name shift was one of 97 naming proposals filed last year by Colorado attorney D’Arcy Winston Straub with the U.S. Bureau on Geographic Names.
“Stephen Long does represent an aspect of American history that some may find controversial,” reads Straub’s submission to the federal naming board. “The name of the peak should reflect this astonishing rock formation as opposed to a historical figure that will have less significance with each passing generation and is associated with a controversial aspect of history.”
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