Tahoma: The Mountain Washington Won't Rename
Near Ashford, Washington
On a clear day in Seattle, the mountain appears on the southern horizon without announcement, its glaciated summit rising about fourteen thousand four hundred feet above the Sound, above the lowland forest, above the interstate traffic below it. It is, by any measure, the dominant geographic feature of the region. The Muckleshoot, Puyallup, Nisqually, Yakama, and other Coast Salish and Interior Salish peoples whose territories surrounded and included the mountain called it Tahoma, or variants of that name. The word derives from a Lushootseed and Puyallup root meaning, roughly, water from the mountain.
British explorer George Vancouver named it in May of seventeen ninety-two, on a clear day from his ship in the Sound. He called it after Rear Admiral Peter Rainier, his former commander in the Royal Navy. Rear Admiral Peter Rainier never visited the Pacific Northwest. He is associated with the mountain only because George Vancouver wanted to honor someone and the mountain was the largest object available.
Washington state legislators have introduced bills to restore the Indigenous name Tahoma at least three times since twenty eighteen. None has passed. The resistance comes from various directions: concerns about print materials, road signs, and the investment in "Mount Rainier" as a recognizable brand. In twenty fifteen, the federal government renamed Mount McKinley to Denali, the Athabascan name the Alaska state government and Indigenous peoples had used for decades. The comparison has not moved the Washington legislature.
The National Park Service, which administers Mount Rainier National Park, acknowledges the Indigenous name in its interpretive materials. Rangers at Paradise and the Hoh River talk about Tahoma. The highway signs on Route seven ten say Rainier. The mountain does not appear to be waiting for the legislature to decide. The tribes who have called it Tahoma for thousands of years are not waiting either. They are simply continuing to use the name that was there before anyone needed a sign.
