Posted on 10/12/2017 6:43:36 PM PDT by Olog-hai
After years of debate, a U.S. government board has voted to rename Utah’s Negro Bill Canyon, overruling a recommendation by Utah officials to keep the name.
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names decided Thursday to rename it Grandstaff Canyon to get rid of an offensive name, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. The vote was 12-0, with one member declining to vote. The decision comes 16 years after the board voted to keep the name.
The new name honors black rancher and prospector William Grandstaff, whose cattle grazed there in the 1870s. “His name was Grandstaff; it was not Negro Bill,” said Wendi-Starr Brown, a member of the federal board who is Native American. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how he wanted to be addressed in life.” Brown is a member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe, who represents the Bureau of Indian Affairs on the federal board. […]
The NAACP said the name is not offensive and preserves the history of the site, while the Utah Martin Luther King Jr. Commission called the name “blatant racism.”
The canyon is home to a popular hiking spot in Moab, the gateway to stunning, massive red rock formations. Local officials and business owners have long said the name generates frequent complaints and outcry from tourists who come from around the world, lured by the red-rock landscapes in nearby national parks. …
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I believe their used to be a Nig*er Bill Canyon and Lost mine in the Big Bend area of Texas. Frank J Dobie mentioned it in his works.
Yet, if I sent a check to the "United Negro College Fund" I'm sure they'd return it because I used the word "negro" on the "payable to" line.
Also muskeg vegetation clumps, a kind of winch on a boat, and a bit of a coral reef.
““N***r Bill Canyon”. “
Why censor the common historical term? Some might argue that you’re just being PC.
No.
Known as Potato Latke? I like it. Sour cream.
ah yes, I remember Negro Mountain.
I went to Frostburg State College.
Back then, there was no controversy about the name of the mountain. It was a different time.
Don’t let the SJWs know what Grand Tetons or Cajon Pass means.
It’s an interesting story; and as someone mentioned regarding ‘Negro Bill’, if they changed the name to ‘Goliath’ or ‘Nemesis’, eventually nobody would remember the man or the story.
(That area is a beautiful part of Maryland.)
What’s strange is no one knows what this lake is OFFICIALLY called now, not even the NY DEC. They only know it was renamed from the older racial references. When I was a kid we used to swimming at nearby Sheppard Lake.
If it’s Spanish, ‘cajon’ means a drawer, like in a chest of drawers; probably related to ‘caja’, or box.
You may be thinking of ‘cojon’;-)
So a group of D.C. beaurcrats decided to be the tiebreaker. No surprise the beaurcrats decided to go the PC route.
Lol.
I’ve driven past Negro Bill many times when heading down to Moab. Grandstaff sounds too bland, IMO. Everything has to be sanitized and without character. :(
From Wiki:
Negro Bill Canyon (called Nigger Bill Canyon from the late 19th century until the 1960s) is a canyon in southeast Utah. It is part of the Colorado River watershed. Its stream flows directly into the main channel of the Colorado River within Moab Canyon.
Tough shiite, some of us were raised with the original adjectives as polite speech. The alternate back then was considered rude. I am out of date, sue me.
Being old now, I will not change my speech patterns to suit "modern" cultural BS. Nothing of current culture shows me the integrity to change.
I KNEW it, seen it too many times before.
Negro Bill had a grand Staff!
As long as it is not “Cabron”................
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