Mount Rainier Research Paper

WASHINGTON — Since President Barack Obama decided to rename Mount McKinley, why not also restore the Native American name of Mount Rainier, the iconic Washington state peak named for a British admiral who fought the Americans during the Revolutionary War?

That 's what advocates in the long battle to rename Mount Rainier as Mount Tacoma or Tahoma want to know.

"It 's a much more compelling argument to rename the mountain here than in Alaska," said Bill Baarsma, former mayor of the city of Tacoma and president of the Tacoma Historical Society. "Why are we continuing to name this mountain after a British admiral that slayed Americans in the Revolutionary War?"

Federal officials, though, say there are no plans to rename Mount Rainier and

McCloud said the mountain shouldn 't be named after a man who never even set foot on North American soil. "Our people have always lived here and that 's something that isn 't recognized," she said.

British explorer George Vancouver named it Mount Rainier in 1792 after a friend and fellow British naval officer who fought sea battles against the Americans.

The board of geographic names last took up a proposal to rename Mount Rainier in 2009 and decided "the overwhelming support and the predominate use of the locals was for Mount Rainier," Yost said.

"It 's not the board 's mission to restore historical names, it 's to make standard for federal use the name that is used locally by the majority of the people who use the name on a regular basis," Yost said.

There is essentially universal support in Alaska for renaming Mount McKinley to Denali, with state officials from both parties and Alaska 's congressional delegation pushing the issue for decades. Almost no one who lived in Alaska used the name Mount McKinley, and anyone who did so in conversation was immediately marked as a tourist.

Mount Rainier, on the other hand, is a commonly used name in Washington state — except by those engaged in the long effort to restore the Native