DENVER (AP) — Federal officials on Friday renamed a towering mountain southwest of Denver as part of a national effort to address the history of oppression and violence against Native Americans.
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names voted overwhelmingly to change Mount Evans to Mount Blue Sky at the request of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes and with the approval of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. The Arapaho were known as the Blue Sky People, while the Cheyenne hold an annual renewal-of-life ceremony called Blue Sky.
The 14,264-foot (4,348-meter) peak was named after John Evans, Colorado’s second territorial governor and ex officio superintendent of Indian affairs. Evans resigned after Col. John Chivington led an 1864 U.S. cavalry massacre of more than 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne people — most of them women, children and the elderly — at Sand Creek in what is now southeastern Colorado.
“It is a huge step, not only for the Cheyenne and Arapaho people, but also for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Southern Ute Tribe, Northern Arapaho Tribe, Northern Cheyenne Tribe, and other allies who worked diligently to begin the healing process, bringing honor to a monumental and majestic mountain,” Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes Gov. Reggie Wassana said after Friday’s vote.
Tribal leaders are now focusing their efforts on changing the name of the adjacent Mount Evans Wilderness Area to Mount Blue Sky Wilderness area, which would require congressional action.
Polis, a Democrat, revived the state’s 15-member geographic naming panel in July 2020 to make recommendations for his review before being forwarded for final federal approval. On Friday, the federal board considered changing several other geographical names submitted from across the country, none as prominent or well-known as Mount Evans.
The name Mount Evans was first applied to the peak in the 1870s and first published on U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps in 1903, according to research compiled for the national naming…
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