Seattle vs. The New England Magazine
Local outrage forces a Boston publisher to explain why they renamed Mount Rainier in a national article.
The people of Seattle who subscribed to the New England Magazine, but who objected to its unwarrantable change of the name of Mount Rainier in the article on the city of Seattle written by John W. Pratt, are forced to the conclusion that it has no excuse to offer. Mr. Pratt has received no reply whatever to his letters. At his request, Mr. Hammond Lamont, formerly of the Post-Intelligencer staff, went to Boston and called at the office. He found the office in a less pretentious structure than suggested. He spoke with an assistant who claimed the manuscript had been illegible, leading a compositor to mistake 'Rainier' for 'Tacoma,' and that the proofreader had not caught the mistake. The assistant would not say definitively that the trouble was due to the proofreader, nor would he say definitely that the editor had not made the change. Mr. Lamont's own conclusion was that the editor was the guilty party.
“The subscribers who so long supported the magazine can draw their own inference from the actions of the managers.”
The 'Mount Rainier vs. Mount Tacoma' naming dispute was a century-long civic identity war in Washington. Today, the debate has shifted from maps to indigenous reclamation, yet the local sensitivity to outsiders misrepresenting regional landmarks remains a classic Seattle trait.
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