Arizona next to erase racist's name from mountain peak

In 2014 two national forests based in Montana, one named for the Swiss guy who helped convince President Thomas Jefferson to use an executive order to buy land from a country that didn’t even own it and one named for a war criminal were merged into a single administrative unit. 

In 2015 Senator Lisa Murkowski and the US Park Service did what Alaskans asked of Congress and urged the body to approve a name change for North America's highest peak. That same year in the occupied Black Hills of South Dakota descendants of European colonizers became apoplectic over the proposal to restore that state's highest point to its Lakota name, Hinhan Kaga or A Making of Owls but settled on Black Elk Peak instead. As a result of ingesting psychoactive fungi Heȟáka Sápa or Nicholas Black Elk rejected catholicism and returned to Lakota ways after he realized the Roman Church was committing crimes against his people. 

With the Oglala Lakota Nation as an interested party Chief Arvol Looking Horse submitted a request to the US Board on Geographic Names saying the words “Devils Tower” are a malapropism but Wyoming's Republican congressional delegation is resisting that name change with every far white wing dollar they can raise. Local opposition has been able to obstruct name changes so far and the Wyoming Board on Geographic Names is notoriously slow in removing offensive designations from geographical features.

California has finally changed the name of its famous Squaw Valley Ski Resort to Palisades Tahoe. Colorado is renaming Chinaman Gulch, Negro Creek, Negro Mesa, Negro Basin, Negro Draw and Squaw Mountain but has deferred renaming a mountain bearing the moniker of a territorial governor with a role in the Sand Creek Massacre. 

The Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park memorializes Ferdinand V. Hayden who advocated for the extermination of Indigenous people and Mount Doane is named for Lieutenant Gustavus Doane who led a massacre of the Piikani, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. 

A group of Native American students is urging Flagstaff city officials to rename one of the San Francisco Peaks due to its namesakes’ history of racism. The Peaks are sacred to numerous tribal nations. Agassiz Peak is currently named after 19-century Swiss-American scientist Louis Agassiz. The biologist was a known proponent of polygenism, a theory used to legitimize belief in white superiority. Makaius Marks, who is Diné, is part of a group of students calling for the peak to be renamed to its traditional Hopi name, Öo'mawki. [Group pushes for renaming of San Francisco peak linked to racist history]

Agassiz' name appears on several geographical features in North America including a glacial lake, mountains in Arizona, California, Utah, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and glaciers in Montana and Alaska. 

ip image: Odakota Mountain is a little higher than its listed 7205 feet.