Mount Reagan piques interest
FROM THE TOP OF MOUNT CLAY . . . NO, MOUNT REAGAN . . . OH, NEVER MIND -- I have arrived here on a clear day, with visibility 60 miles in every direction. Maine lies off to the east, and below me to the west I see the vast, sprawling white clapboard Mount Washington Hotel. Perhaps the weather will promote clear thinking atop this recently renamed 5,533-foot peak in the Presidential range of New Hampshire's White Mountains.
"Mount Reagan" is one of the White Mountains' best-kept secrets. Not one hiker I encountered during the trek here had any idea it existed. It is barely noticeable, like an impacted tooth between the majestic peaks of Mount Washington and Mount Jefferson.
But it does exist, thanks to the New Hampshire Legislature, which approved the name change last August. According to the website of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which is hoping to slap the Great Communicator's visage on the $10 bill (sayonara, Alexander Hamilton!) and on one-half of the country's dimes (farewell, FDR!), Mount Reagan is their only successful "dedication" in the six New England states. Our nation's capital renamed its airport; the Marshall Islands dedicated a ballistic missile defense test site. And New Hampshire threw in Mount Clay, named after the southern statesman Henry Clay, now Mount Reagan.
There's just one problem. No one calls it Mount Reagan. No signs call it Mount Reagan. The New Hampshire legislator who submitted the naming bill, Representative Kenneth Weyler, does call it Mount Reagan, and says he left a piece of paper at the top, under a cairn, reading "Welcome to Mount Reagan." The paper has vanished. But the US Forest Service sign clearly directs hikers to Mount Clay.
What gives? Well, just because the New Hampshire Legislature says something is so doesn't make it so. "There can only be one official name for a feature," Roger Payne, executive secretary of the US Board on Geographic Names, told me. (In an interview with Appalachia magazine, Payne said: "It would have been nice if it hadn't happened.") Only his board, part of the US Geological Survey, can officially change names. And the board considers name changes only after an eminento has been dead for five years. So Mount Clay it is.
To be fair to the Reaganauts, naming the Presidential peaks has been an inexact science. Several peaks bear the names of men who might have wanted to be president -- Sam Adams, Daniel Webster, to say nothing of serial aspirant Clay -- but never made it. Furthermore, the names aren't exactly etched in stone. Mount Pleasant was renamed Mount Eisenhower after the president's death, and the frisky New Hampshire Legislature honored the state's only president, Franklin Pierce, by renaming Mount Clinton (nonono, not that Clinton) Mount Pierce in 1913.
The Appalachian Mountain Club's definitive "White Mountain Guide" notes drily that the Clinton-to-Pierce change "was not universally accepted." There is still a Mount Clinton trail, and a Mount Clinton Road, and nothing -- apart from the summit -- named after Pierce. The AMC professes to be agnostic on the potentially divisive Mount Reagan issue. A spokeswoman referred me to the club's Policy on Naming of Natural Features, which "supports maintaining historical names attributed to natural features," but then passes the buck over to the Geological Survey people for final resolution.
What's going to happen? It's hard to say, because there have been high-profile mountain muddles before. For instance, Alaskans voted to rechristen Mount McKinley as Mount Denali during the 1970s. The Board of Geographic Names was on the verge of approving the change when a senator from McKinley's home state of Ohio introduced a bill in Congress preserving the original name. Fearing it would be trumped by Congress, the board never approved the change, and the tallest peak in the country remains, officially, Mount McKinley.
While I doubt that someone from Clay's home state of Kentucky will intervene, the Board of Geographic Names considers "local use acceptance" to be the most important criterion for a name change. I don't think the Nalgene bottle and trail mix crowd is going to start scheduling meet-ups on "Mount Reagan" anytime soon. But you know my motto: I've been wrong before.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
