Renaming the Great Mountain
After years of dispute with Seattle, Tacoma officials celebrate a victory in restoring the Indigenous name of the mountain to Northern Pacific Railway maps.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It is 'Mt. Tacoma.' The original Indian name of the beautiful mountain that stands guard over this city is to be preserved despite the attempt of an English navigator, who wanted glory, and the machinations of a jealous city on Elliott bay, whose representative at Washington had the name changed on the government maps with the purpose to injure Tacoma. On the presentation of the matter to the Northern Pacific railway by the Tacoma Commercial club, the railroad has decided to hereafter call the mountain by its proper name in its advertising matter. A. D. Charlton, assistant general passenger agent, and the trustees of the Commercial club met yesterday and went over the matter and the railway official decided to put the mountain on the maps hereafter as Mt. Tacoma. Now if Tacoma can get a representative at Washington who will do things he could probably get it changed also on the government maps and the great mountain will then be called what the prehistoric races decided it should be called.
“The original Indian name of the beautiful mountain that stands guard over this city is to be preserved.”
The 'Mountain Name' debate was a central obsession of early 20th-century civic identity, reflecting the deep-seated rivalry between Tacoma and Seattle and the push-pull of honoring Indigenous history against colonial mapping.
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