I’ve always been bored with the naming of many of the geographic features found throughout the United States. How many Boulder Creeks, Deer Creeks, and Bear Creeks are there in this country? Even just right here in Jackson Hole, we have two different Granite Canyons. A quick stroll through Google Maps will uncover many more similarly named areas. And if it’s not something with a trite name, it was named for someone who most likely never even saw the place. Take for example five different spots in Yellowstone National Park all within just a few minutes of driving from each other: Lewis Canyon; Lewis River; Lewis Falls; Lewis Lake; the Lewis Channel Dogshead, all named after Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis & Clark Party, neither of whom ever stepped foot anywhere near what is today Yellowstone National Park. While it was a nice gesture, the names do nothing to add to what the feature actually is. Was this nation really that dull that we couldn’t even think of a descriptive name for a geographic feature? Even the great mountain of Denali, translated to The Great One, was renamed to Mount McKinley simply because he was the president that happened to be in office at the time. Fortunately, that’s finally being corrected. Denali is a unique name, and no one will argue that that mountain is indeed, The Great One.
I frequently drive through different features of the country, all the while wondering, what did the natives of this land call that mountain/river/valley/lake/etc.? It was only recently that I learned that the native name for Devil’s Tower is actually Bear Lodge. (“Devil” being another cliché naming convention – Devil’s Canyon, Devil’s Staircase, etc.) The name Bear Lodge originated from a story of a great bear scratching the sides of the tower, thus leaving the irregularities up the sides of the spire. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s a much more creative name for the site that fires up the imagination, adding an extra layer of fascination with an already captivating natural structure. On the opposite side, according to the texts, the devil is very far underground, so why would he be on top of a giant tower shooting up into the sky? The naming for such a feature doesn’t even accurately follow the myth that it’s associated with.
Many natives of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota Great Sioux Nation are now working to change the name back to Bear Lodge, and I wholeheartedly support them. I would love to see boring and overused names of geographic features contain more character and intrigue about them by weaving in legends and tales about their names, while also knowing it was the only feature with that name.
So what’s the holdup with changing the name back to Bear Lodge? According to the article linked in the paragraph above:
“Not far from Devils Tower, there are mountains and an area of national forest named Bear Lodge. Changing the name will create confusion and even lead to fewer tourists to the state.”
Interestingly enough, that hasn’t seemed to happen here in Jackson Hole. Grand Teton National Park (which includes the Teton Mountains) is not only neighbored by the Teton Wilderness, but also Bridger-Teton National Forest, and yet, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of confusion from people turning up lost in the adjacent forest because they couldn’t find Grand Teton National Park. But to add to the confusion in the area, there’s also the valley of Jackson Hole itself inside of Grand Teton National Park, the valley named after Davey Jackson, the first non-native to supposedly stay in the area year-round. The valley name is of course not to be confused with Jackson Lake, Jackson Peak, Jackson Hole Ski Resort, or especially the town of Jackson, though it frequently does just that since I’m asked the difference nearly every time I guide a wildlife safari. And yet, Grand Teton National Park has been experiencing record tourism practically every year in recent years despite having so many different features sharing the same names, much more so than the Bear Lodge area.
What about other places? Consider Mount Hood. Thus far, to my knowledge, no one has confused the Mount Hood National Forest with the summit of Mount Hood, so I find it highly unlikely someone will drive right by the sign pointing to Bear Lodge National Monument with the spire dominating the horizon and assume that they need to continue driving in the opposite direction. Fortunately, from what I can tell, it seems most Americans can apparently read text on maps and signs, so the confusion argument is a completely irrational argument based out of fear of the unknown.
What’s another reason? According to the Wyoming Department of Tourism:
“We’ve worked so hard to build it up to the point where we are now, the amount of tourism we have and the spending, we are at a record high for visitors and for visitor spending and local and state tax gatherings as well.”
Leave it to Wyoming to continue the trend of completely missing the gold mine of positive PR sitting literally right under their noses in favor of a fear of change. Rather than embracing the native tribes and creating an extraordinary amount of noteworthy and positive buzz, they’d rather continue a long, drawn-out battle with native cultures, alienating them and their children even further. An alternative option would be to allow the change to happen, and then release all kinds of press showing what a compassionate and understanding relationship Wyoming has with its native tribes, which would attract international attention and would probably cause traffic to skyrocket to Bear Lodge National Monument – sorry, Devil’s Tower – and other areas in the nearby Black Hills of South Dakota.
With Obama recently restoring Denali’s proper name, discussions are beginning elsewhere about restoring a landmark’s native name. People in Seattle are talking about changing Mount Rainier’s name back to Tahoma, or at least something similar. In addition to a plethora of other areas, I would also love to see Zion National Park renamed to its original Mukuntuweap. The name was only changed because people naming the park thought Mukuntuweap would be too hard to remember. Obviously that wasn’t a problem for major landmarks all over Hawaii, such as Haleakala, Na Poli, and Waimea Canyon, to name a few. It also didn’t seem to be a problem for people to remember some confusing native words that later became names of 27 states, including Mississippi, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Wyoming.