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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2016
PARTING SHOT FROM DANNY MILLER
A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers
The afternoon sun breaks through cloud cover on the Pacific Ocean in September as seen from Oswald West State Park.
ODDITY
Sign of the times
Feds change signage
on trailhead named
after black cowboy
Associated Press
M
OAB, Utah — Though
local oficials decided not to
change the name of eastern
Utah’s Negro Bill Canyon, federal land
managers have decided to mark the
trail by less controversial name.
The Bureau of Land Management
has replaced the “Negro Bill” trail-
head sign with one reading “Grandstaff
Trailhead,” another name for the popu-
lar recreation area, The Deseret News
reported. More than two dozen high-
way signs have also been switched.
BLM spokeswoman Lisa Bryant
said the agency is now speaking out as
being in favor of changing the name of
the canyon.
“It’s been an ongoing discussion in
the community,” Bryant said. “The way
people have looked at it has been evolv-
ing, and the way BLM looks at it has
evolved. The BLM is now on record of
being in favor of renaming the trailhead
and the canyon.”
The federal agency’s decision
comes during a period of renewed
national scrutiny of statues and other
objects honoring the Confederacy and
the use of the Confederate lag. The
debate, like the one about the name of
the canyon, has focused on issues of
race and historical accuracy.
Negro Bill Canyon was named after
a black cowboy, William Grandstaff,
whose cattle grazed there in the 1870s.
The canyon’s name has long been
debated. Grand County voted in August
2015 to keep the canyon’s name. A sim-
ilar effort to change the canyon’s name
was defeated in 2013.
Wikimedia Commons
Opinion is divided over a sign named for a black cowboy. The new sign reads “Grandstaff Trailhead.”
“Like everything in this county,
we always have strong sentiment on
both sides of every issue, and this was
no different,” Grand County Council
Chairwoman Elizabeth Tubbs said.
Those advocating for a change have
often cited the offensive connotation
of the word “negro.” But those for the
name say it is keeping an important his-
torical igure alive.
“I am ecstatic,” said Grand County
Councilwoman Mary McGann about
the sign change. McGann had spear-
headed an effort to change the name
in 2015. “When my husband gets off
work, we are going to drive down
there, and he is going to take a pic-
ture of me at the trailhead,” she said
Tuesday.
McCann has said that landmarks
named for white historical igures
aren’t generally prefaced by race, and
the canyon should bear his last name
instead.
Tubbs, who was against changing
the name, said keeping the history of
the canyon is worth the downside.
“I did not particularly like the word
or name, but I felt like we were trying
to sweep something under the rug that
could have been a teaching moment in
our history,” she said. “We had a person
who happened to be African American
who lived in the area which was fairly
unusual about this part of the country
at the time.”
Last year, Salt Lake City NAACP
President Jeanetta Williams drummed
up support to keep the name because it
because it makes it clear that the can-
yon is named for a black historical
igure.
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