MT INEZ | Mt Discover Inez?

From The Elizabethtown Post, Dec. 7, 1916.

In late 1916 the citizens of Elizabethtown or Lewis or both decided to rename Mt Discovery after Inez Milholland Boissevain.

The Name-Change Approved

1. The Name of Mount Inez Was Announced in a Four-Column Article in The Elizabethtown Post, December 7, 1916. The newspaper says, with some finality:

The highest mountain on Meadowmount (the Milholland farm/estate) is "Old Discovery" from the summit of which is obtained a wonderful view of Lake Champlain, the Adirondacks, Green Mountains, and vast sweep towards Canada. It stands an outpost of the ranges like Mount Shasta in relation to the Sierra Nevadas. Hereafter its name will be "Mount Inez," a fitting monument of nature for her nose love for the mountains was only equalled by her love for the sea.

Not content with this fine tribute, the newspaper editorializes further:

Inez Milholland-Boissevain [sic, unique use of hyphen with Inez's name] will have a monument made by the hand of man but she has one already fashioned by God in Nature and in changing the name "Discovery" – which means little to this generation whatever significance it ever possessed – to "Mount Inez" something has been done in the right direction that we believe all our people will approve and unanimously carry out.

2. The Decision is Noted in an Inez Biography. The plan to change the name of the mountain from "Discovery" to "Inez" is noted at the end of the long entry (pp. 188-190) by Paul S. Boyer in Notable American Women, 1607-1951.

3. The Republican Party Announced It. According to Andrea Anesi, Archivist for the Adirondack History Museum, which is operated by the Essex County Historical Society, an article from the Essex County Republican of August 1, 1924 reported on the pageant to be held in Inez’s honor “at Meadowmount on Mount Inez.” 

4. The Plan Was Noted in 1984. In the editorial below from the Valley News, September 12, 1984, the news should have gone forth to the people who keep track of names. 

The Name Change Was Not Implemented

Before: An 1897 Map Showing Mt Discovery

Alas, the approval process seems to have happened, but the "carry out" part has not. 

1. The Maps Don't Show It. Now, 100 years later, and while most of Inez's 20th-century contemporary biographies indicate the name change took place the maps don't show it.

After (100 Years Later): Google Map, 2017
shows it now called... Mt Discovery.

The Milholland farm included Mt Discovery. The name may have come from the discovery of iron in the Adirondacks in 1826, but that story is about David Henderson on a higher mountain in the Adirondacks. The relevance of the story is that when Henderson died the name of the place where he died was changed to Calamity Pond...

2. In 1916, I reminded the people of Lewis, Elizabethtown and Essex County that it was time to "carry out" the name change. 

3. The Granddaughter of Harriot Stanton Blatch, Speaking in East Hampton This Week, Noted the Omission. Coline Jenkins was with her daughter Elizabeth Jenkins. Coline went on from her talk in East Hampton to Lewis, New York.

Next Steps

1. Keeping Both Names? "Mt Discovery Inez"? I suggested "Mt Discover Inez." It ought to be easier to amend a name if the old name is incorporated.

2. Ultimately, the decision-maker is the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) in the U.S. Geological Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Click on the link – GNIS still shows the name as Mount Discovery and nothing about Inez.

Either way, I ask you: HOW LONG, ESSEX COUNTY, MUST AMERICANS WAIT FOR THE NAME CHANGE?