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California State Parks officials are seeking comments from the public on a proposed plan to change the name of Fremont Peak State Park.
Feedback can be sent to the state through a survey, or by email to feedback.diablorange@parks.ca.gov with “Fremont Peak Name Change” as the subject line.
The parks department will accept public comments until close of business on Oct. 23, after which department staff will review the feedback and submit a recommendation report.
If the proposal is accepted, this would be the second state park renamed as part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Reexamining Our Past Initiative.
The proposal to change the park’s name was requested by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band in a letter from former leader Valentin Lopez to Newsom in 2019.
Lopez is known for advocating for “decolonization” of California’s former indigenous lands including what he has called symbols of “colonial regimentation and widespread land theft.”
The proposed name is Tooyohtak State Park. According to the California State Parks website, “tooyohtak” is a Mutsun word meaning “bee place” or “at the bees.”
The state parks website also notes that the proposed name would “honor the longstanding relationship between the Mutsun people and this culturally significant landscape.”
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the park’s current namesake, Captain John C. Fremont, was a military officer, politician and explorer of the American West. His journey from Nevada, across the snow-capped Sierra Nevada to Fort Sutter on the Sacramento River gained him notoriety.
Fremont was a staunch abolitionist and the first nominee to run for president under the newly formed Republican Party. He ultimately lost the election to James Buchanan.
Just before the start of the Mexican-American War, Mexican General Jose Castro ordered Fremont and his men to leave California. In an act of defiance, Fremont constructed a makeshift log fort and raised an American flag on a mountain peak in what is now San Benito County which some believe was Fremont Peak.
While Fremont Peak has since been labeled a historical landmark, the California State Parks website notes that “historical research has found disagreement about whether this mountain is the peak where Fremont planted an American flag in 1846.”
In Lopez’s letter, he shared his grievances over the state of California’s actions in relation to landmarks significant to California Native Americans.
“The State of California must, in a truthful and complete way, tell all of their past and current offenses against California Native Americans,” Lopez wrote. “How can we have a healthy relationship with the state of California when it turns the missions, which were responsible for the death of nearly 100,000 of our ancestors, into tourist attractions and State Parks for monetary gain…when Fremont Peak State Park is named after John C. Fremont, who is responsible for the largest one-day massacre of Indians in the United States?”
Lopez is likely referring to the Sacramento River massacre. According to Wikipedia, Fremont and his men were warned about a potential attack from a Native American encampment near the Sacramento River. Fremont and party then discovered a camp of around 5,000 Wintu people, mostly women and children. Fremont and his men advanced, surrounding the encampment with rifles, and slaughtered the Native Americans. After the incident, Fremont and his men continued their expedition across California, killing more Native Americans along the way.
“At the time, there was a shoot-on-sight order for Native Americans,” California State Parks Cultural Resources Division Supervisor Amanda Blosser said. “Fremont is a man with a very complex history.”
If the proposal goes through, it will be the second instance in which the Reexamining Our Past Initiative has changed a state park’s name. The first was the Su-Meg State Park, formerly Patrick’s Point State Park, in Humboldt County.
The park “was named after a man who murdered Native American children,” Blosser said. “The Yurok Tribe requested the name change.”
According to Blosser, California State Parks regularly consults with Native American tribes on various projects, and it has no authority over matters of Native American heritage or land ownership.
While the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band is currently recognized as an official Native American tribe by the state of California, they are not recognized by the federal government.
The tribal band’s legitimacy has recently been disputed. The California Indian Nation filed a lawsuit against California’s Native American Heritage Commission, in part requesting the removal of the Amah Mutsun from the state’s list of Native American tribes. More recently, a Sacramento County Superior Court judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed.
Blosser noted that the proposal to restore the Mutsun name will not change the name of the peak itself, but only the name of the park. The mountain summit is considered a national geographic feature and as such would require coordination with the federal government to rename.
“At this point, under the current administration [the federal government] is not focused on taking any applications for name changes,” Blosser said.
According to Blosser, the name change proposal will be placed on the agenda for a future public meeting of the California State Parks and Recreation Commission. The commissioners will hear live public testimony from the public, tribal governments, local officials and advocacy groups. They will then vote on whether to approve the name change.
The next commission meeting is scheduled for December, though it is uncertain whether the renaming proposal will be on that meeting’s agenda.
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