Changing Gore Range, named for man who slaughtered Colorado wildlife, hits stiff opposition in Grand County

A Grand County commissioner on Tuesday condemned a proposal to change the name of the Gore Range.

Grand commissioners briefly considered a proposal from Summit County commissioners that would rename of the mountain range the Nuchu Range. The 75-mile-long range spans across Grand, Routt, Eagle and Summit counties.

Commissioner Merrit Linke made it clear he does not support the effort, and he doesn’t think it’s worth the board’s time to even discuss it.

“I think that it’s trying to change history from 150 years ago,” Linke said. “I get it, that Mr. Gore — 150 years ago in 1857 or whatever it was — wasn’t maybe by today’s standards somebody that we would look up to in terms of what he did.

“But I don’t think changing the name of the Gore Range today to ‘Nunchuck,’ or ‘Nuchuck,’ or whatever it is, is really going to fix all those things.”

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Commissioner Rich Cimino outlined the name changing process, which is ultimately decided by a federal board.

Cimino serves on the state’s Geographic Naming Advisory Board, which was revived last year following rising social consciousness of racist and fraught landmark names during the Black Lives Matter protests.

“It’s very a controversial thing, in my opinion,” Cimino said. “People care about the names of things. You spend your whole life — your parents spent their whole life — calling it the Gore Range.”

Grand commissioners were sent a form that they can submit to the US Board on Geographic Names with their recommendation, whether it would be to approve or reject the change.

According to a case brief provided to the commissioners, Sir St. George Gore was an Irish aristocrat known for his 1854-1857 hunting expedition in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas.

During the trip, his party killed an estimated 4,000 bison, 1,500 elk, 2,000 deer, 1,500 antelope and 500 bears, including at least 100 grizzly bears.

“The extravagant and expensive trip was unfavorably viewed in its time by Indigenous peoples and white mountain men as a destructive slaughter of wildlife,” the brief’s author wrote. “Local and national objections to the excesses of Gore’s hunting have been well documented since the 1800s.”

The document also points out that Gore never set foot in or near the core of the mountain range named for him — though he may have crossed Gore Pass. It is not known why his name became associated with the range.

According to the summary, the name for the range may have come after a passing reference in an 1868 newspaper article about a climb of Long’s Peak, where “Gore’s Range” could be seen in the distance.

Articles published in 1935 also referred to the range as Eagles Nest Range, and Grand County Commissioner Kris Manguso wondered why that wasn’t the proposed name.

The name Nuchu comes from the Ute Indians, who lived in those mountains and surrounding lands before being forcefully moved to three reservations in Utah and southwest Colorado. The three tribes selected the new name, which means “Ute” in their language.

Manguso said she had not had enough time to research and form an opinion on the possible change. Cimino added that because of his role on the state board, he would defer to the other two commissioners.

“I have a hard time trying to change names of things that happened 150 years ago because it might offend somebody today,” Linke said. “I’m not seeing it. Sorry.”

The commissioners did not make any decisions or schedule additional discussion, instead asking first for further information about the requested response and associated deadline.