Editorial: If Davis name must go, use Shoshone name for peak

Wheeler Peak (right) and Jeff Davis Peak (left) Photo by Stavros Basis

The Nevada Board of Geographic Names voted unanimously this past week to, well, literally “white out” from Nevada maps the name of another historic figure whose actions do not comport with the current politically correct world view.

According to an Associated Press account, the panel has recommended to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to change the name of Nevada’s third highest mountain peak from Jeff Davis Peak to the Shoshone name Doso Doyabi — pronounced DOH-soh doy-AH-bee — which means “white mountain” and frankly sounds like the generic label given any mountain that remains largely snow-capped much of the year.

The push to change the name came a couple of years ago at the same time a number of monuments to members of the Confederacy were being taken down and there was a clamor to restore original American Indian names. The Obama administration issued an executive order renaming North America’s tallest peak in Alaska from Mount McKinley — named for the nation’s 25th president, Republican William McKinley, who was assassinated in office in 1901 — to Denali, the original Athabascan name.

The 12,771-foot Jeff Davis Peak is in White Pine County inside the Great Basin National Park.

The monicker was first attached to what is now Wheeler Peak, the tallest point in the park and the second tallest in Nevada. It was named Jeff Davis by Lt. Col. Edward Steptoe of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers in 1855 while Jefferson Davis served as secretary of the War Department, a half dozen years before the Civil War began.

After the Civil War, during which Davis served as president of the Confederacy, an Army mapping expedition headed by Lt. George Montague Wheeler, named the peak for Wheeler and the Jeff Davis tag was shifted to the shorter nearby peak to the east.

At one point in the discussion there were calls to rename the peak for Las Vegas civil rights leader James McMillan or Robert Smalls, an escaped slave who fought for the Union in the Civil War but had no real link to Nevada any more than Jeff Davis did.

The AP reported that Christine Johnson, the collection manager for the Nevada Historical Society who serves as a non-voting member on the state naming board, said the name Doso Doyabi was supported by the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe and members of other area tribes.

In a letter from the Duckwater Shoshone elders, tribal member Warren Graham said reinstating the mountain’s original name would honor the tribe’s cultural heritage.

“These places were called something else before they were renamed” by Euro-American settlers, Graham wrote. “Some of these names are disappearing along with our elders and it is good that these names are not forgotten.”

Jack Hursh, a cartographer and publications specialist at the Nevada Bureau of Mines & Geology who serves on the naming panel, e-mailed the AP to say, “The Doso Doyabi name is a Nevadan name proposed by Nevadans.”

Though we are reticent to whitewash history with such name changes, returning to an original Shoshone label is preferable to attaching someone else’s name, lest they fall out of favor in the future.

As Jefferson Davis once said after the war, “Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to make your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished — a reunited country.”

We urge the national board to finalize the change and put this to rest.

A version of this editorial appeared this week in some of the Battle Born Media newspapers — The Ely Times, the Mesquite Local News, the Mineral County Independent-News, the Eureka Sentinel,  Sparks Tribune and the Lincoln County Record.

Las Vegas water district making another run at grabbing rural water

Hearings are underway in Carson City to determine how much, if any, groundwater the Las Vegas water district may pump from aquifers in White Pine, Lincoln and Nye counties.

The hearings are being conducted by state engineer Jason King, who previously had granted the Southern Nevada Water District 84,000 acre-feet a year. A state judge sent King back to the drawing board when he ruled plans for monitoring, mitigating and managing the water transfer were “arbitrary and capricious.”

Senior Judge Robert Estes wrote, “There are no objective standards to determine when mitigation will be required and implemented. The Engineer has listed what mitigation efforts can possibly be made, i.e., stop pumping, modifying pumping, change location of pumps, drill new wells … but does not cite objective standards of when mitigation is necessary.”

USGS employee at well near the southern Snake Range, Nev.

Judge Estes concluded that if “it is premature to set triggers and thresholds, it is premature to grant water rights.”

Judge Estes listed, as an example of objective standards, the plan in place for mitigation at Devil’s Hole in Armagosa Valley, home of an endangered minnow. He said mitigation is triggered when the water level falls 2.7 feet below a copper washer. “This is an objective and recognizable standard.”

An attorney representing the water district was quoted as saying Monday, “The state engineer did not err in granting SNWA’s permits. The same quantity of water — and in some cases more water — can be granted.”

That doesn’t jibe with a 2014 study by the U.S. Geological Survey  that found the proposed increases in water withdrawals in and near Snake Valley by the SNWA would likely result in declining groundwater levels and a decrease in natural discharge to springs and streams.

“Because of the magnitude of the proposed development project and the interconnected nature of groundwater basins in the region, there have been concerns that new pumping will disrupt Snake Valley’s groundwater supplies and threaten the wetlands and ranches that rely upon them,” said Melissa Masbruch, USGS scientist and lead author of the new report. “This study can help assess the effects of future groundwater withdrawals on groundwater resources in the Snake Valley area.”

The study calculated all the groundwater recharge for Snake Valley from various sources, including precipitation, unconsumed irrigation and inflow from other aquifers and found that the valley groundwater receives about 175,000 acre-feet. But when all of the outflow is added up — current wells, springs, streams and outflow to other aquifers— it is almost precisely the same amount of water — equilibrium.

This prompted the authors of the study to warn, “Increased well withdrawals within these high transmissivity areas will likely affect a large part of the study area, resulting in declining groundwater levels, as well as leading to a decrease in natural discharge to springs …”

A study for the water authority by Hobbs, Ong & Associates of Las Vegas found the cost to drill wells and build pipelines and pumps to send the groundwater to Las Vegas would be $15 billion or, in some years, $2,000 an acre-foot — while farmers in California and Arizona can buy Colorado River water for $20 an acre-foot. The study said Las Vegas water rates would have to triple to pay for the project.