#MOUNTAIN DUCK FILE RENAME PROBLEM FULL#

We have in Colorado no State pride in the name “Grand.” That name is merely an adjective, and does not mean anything but large or great, and might be applied to any large or beautiful stream. To get a sense of his rhetorical flavor, here’s a passage: From start to finish Edward Taylor delivers an embellished, flowery pitch to Congress to boost his state - and belittle the Green River. Colorado State University’s archives has a copy of it on file. One of his speeches has taken on legendary status among Western historians. You can read the over-the-top affection Edward Taylor felt toward Colorado in his comments to his fellow lawmakers. “He was known from time to time to get up on the floor and make glowing five to ten minute speeches about his adored state, and I think it was a genuine love affair between Edward Taylor and Colorado,” Joseph Taylor says. Undeterred, and backed up with statistics that showed the shorter Grand River contributing more water to the Colorado River, he took on the river’s renaming as a personal crusade in Washington, D.C. He wasn’t going to let Utah or Wyoming lay claim to the river’s headwaters, despite the fact that the Green River is the larger drainage basin. Edward Taylor wanted the Colorado River - the same river that cut the Grand Canyon - to extend into his district and flow near his constituents. The Colorado River began from the confluence of the Green River and Grand River, a fact that irked Colorado congressman Edward Taylor. Bureau of Reclamation illustration shows the river's varying names prior to 1921. “It seems to have rankled a fair number of people on the West Slope of Colorado, where the Colorado River headwaters were, that they had a name that really didn’t resonate with the state,” Joseph Taylor says.Ī U.S. He felt slighted that the river his state was named after didn’t start high up in its mountains. While Edward Taylor is best known for his eponymous grazing legislation - the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 which allowed for livestock grazing on on vast swathes of federal public land - he also staunchly defended West Slope water.Īccording to his testimony in front of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Edward Taylor said he’d been carrying the torch for his river renaming proposal for more than a decade, from his time as a state senator. He’s currently writing a biography of his great-grandfather. Taylor is now a professor of American history at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. “One of my relatives showed up in every single historical study of the American West,” he says. It wasn’t until Joseph Taylor got into Western history in college that he had to reckon with his own family history. It’s hard to get a 10-year-old boy to care too much about anything, he says, let alone a family member he’s never met. Taylor and his brothers groaned from the back seat. During one, the car rumbled across cattle grates out onto Bureau of Land Management rangelands, “followed by my mother waving her arms and saying, ‘your great-grandfather created all this,’” Taylor recalls. Taylor III heard all about Edward Taylor - his great-grandfather - especially during long summer road trips to desolate stretches of the Rocky Mountain West.

So much so that he made the Grand River’s renaming a personal cause.Īs a boy, Joseph E. Turn of the century Democratic Colorado congressman and avowed booster Edward Taylor knew that names matter. They’re attempts to correct wrongs of the past and reflect present day realities. Conflicts over the names of neighborhoods and mountains aren’t uncommon.

#MOUNTAIN DUCK FILE RENAME PROBLEM FULL#

Names are full of meaning, powerful symbols to rally behind or fight against. The names we give to places, mountain tops, rivers and vast stretches of land shape how we feel about them. He was known as a pugnacious defender of Western Slope interests in Congress. Colorado lawmaker Edward Taylor served in the state senate until 1908, when we he was elected to the House of Representatives.

Mountain duck file rename problem