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In the last session of Congress, Senator Clarence C. Dill, a Democrat from Washington, introduced a resolution to change the name of Mount Rainier to Mount Tacoma. The Senate approved the resolution and it went to the House where it now rests in the Committee of Public Lands, which has asked the U. S. Geographic Board for a report on the question.
The matter of naming this particular Mountain goes back to May 8, 1792, when the British Captain, George Vancouver, on a voyage of discovery through the northern Pacific and around the world, set down in his journal that "the weather was serene and pleasant, and the country continued to exhibit between us and the eastern snowy range the same luxuriant appearance. ..." The round, snowy mountain, now forming its southern extremity . . . after my friend Rear Admiral Rainier, I distinguished by the name Mount Rainier." So it was known afterwards.
In 1853, one Theodore Winthrop made a journey over the Cascades; nine years later, he described his journey in a book, The Canoe and the Saddle. Therein he said: "Mount Regnier, Christians have dubbed it. . . . More melodiously, the Siwashes call it Tacoma—a generic term also applied to all snow peaks." Therewith was engendered a controversy.
In 1868, a saw-milling town on Commencement Bay was named Tacoma. In 1873, the Northern Pacific Railway located its western terminus on Puget Sound and called the place New Tacoma. In 1883, the Northern Pacific Railway announced that on its maps and guide books "the Indian name" Tacoma would supplant Mount Rainier. A powerful director of the railroad, who was President of the Tacoma Land Company, booming the new town, saw to the changing of the name.
In 1890, the U. S. Board of Geographic Names composed of ten representatives—two from the Coast and Geodetic Survey, one each from the State Department, Lighthouse Board (Treasury), Engineer Corps (Army), Hydrographic Office (Navy), Post Office Department, Smithsonian Institution, two from the Geological Survey—considered and unanimously decided that the proper name of the mountain was Rainier. In 1917, on a rehearing, the same Board reaffirmed its position, saying:
"No geographic feature in any part of the world can claim a name more firmly fixed by right of discovery, by priority and by universal usage for more than a century.. . . For a hundred years, the name of Mount Rainier has been used whenever the mountain has been mentioned in histories, geographies, books on travel and exploration, scientific publications, encyclopedias, dictionaries and atlases of many nations—by the United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Russia, Spain and even Arabia."
But the citizens of the city of Tacoma were unsatisfied. They refused to call the mountain anything but Mt. Tacoma. Their representatives in Congress set out to fulfill their wishes over the heads of the Geographic Board. Not only was the matter taken to Congress, but an old-fashioned war of pamphlets began. First the Tacoma-ites got out The Name. Then the Rainierians retorted with The Great Myth—"Mount Tacoma—"
Said The Name:
"Admiral Rainier was an obscure Britisher who ravaged our coasts in the time of the Revolutionary War, robbed our citizens, killed and destroyed our people, carried away men, women and children, consigned them to the hold of his ship,