The U.S. Board on Geographic Names in September 2023 renamed a Colorado mountain that boasts the highest paved road in North America Mount Blue Sky.

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The 14,265-foot mountain in Clear Creek County was previously named after former territorial governor John Evans, who authorized the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, when over 200 noncombatant Arapaho and Cheyenne people, mostly women and children, were killed in southeastern Colorado.

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“It’s the name Evans. If it was named Sunflower Mountain or something like that, we would not complain. When Cheyenne and Arapaho see that name, they automatically think of Sand Creek and the atrocities that happened to our forefathers,” Fred Mosqueda, the Arapaho language and culture program coordinator for the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, told Newsline in 2023.

Mosqueda said he saw the renaming of Mount Blue Sky as part of a reconciliation process.

The Arapaho people are known as “Blue Sky people” by some other tribes, and the Southern Cheyenne have an annual ceremony known as Blue Sky. The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes submitted a petition in 2020 to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names alongside The Wilderness Society proposing the Mount Blue Sky name.

The Northern Arapaho Tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe all supported the name change, but the Northern Cheyenne tribe objected to the Mount Blue Sky name with concerns over using a term related to the sacred Cheyenne ceremony.

The federal board’s vote on the final name was delayed so tribes could consult with one another, but they did not reach a consensus. The vote included 15 people in favor of the name change, one opposed and three abstained.

Clear Creek County commissioners voted to rename the mountain in March 2022 and the decision then went to the Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board, which voted in favor of the change in November 2022. Governor Jared Polis then formally recommended the name change to the national board in early 2023.

Tribal elder Rick Williams, a member of the Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne Tribes, led efforts to rescind the state proclamations Evans issued to incite the Sand Creek Massacre.