Officials say no plans to rename Mount Rainier as Mount Tacoma

Since President Barack Obama decided to rename Mount McKinley, why not also restore the Native American name of Mount Rainier, the iconic Washington state peak named for a British admiral who fought the Americans during the Revolutionary War? That’s what advocates in the long battle to rename Mount Rainier as Mount Tacoma or Tahoma want to know. “It’s a much more compelling argument to rename the mountain here than in Alaska,” said Bill Baarsma, former mayor of the city of Tacoma and president of the Tacoma Historical Society. “Why are we continuing to name this mountain after a British admiral that slayed Americans in the Revolutionary War?” Federal officials, though, say there are no plans to rename Mount Rainier and that Interior Secretary Sally Jewell’s order changing Mount McKinley to its Koyukon Athabascan name of Denali was unique. “This was maybe a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” said Lou Yost, executive secretary of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which normally approves such renaming...more