Two Oregon Place Names Offensive to Black People Renamed
Two Oregon locations whose names were considered offensive to Black people have been renamed by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.
Names with Racial Slurs Removed in Douglas and Tillamook Counties
Triple Nickles Creek in Douglas County honors the all-Black U.S. Army 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion of smokejumpers from World War II. The battalion, known as the Triple Nickles, fought Oregon wildfires sparked by Japanese balloon bombs.
Jack Creek in Tillamook County is named after a Black man, known only as Jack, who lived a solitary life in a remote cabin in the Tillamook County Forest in the 1890s.
The New Names Right Past Wrongs
The executive director of the nonprofit Oregon Black Pioneers, Zachary Stocks, praised the renaming decisions, saying the removal of antiquated racial terms helped right past wrongs and honored historic Black men and women.
Bruce Fisher of the Oregon Geographic Names Board said the new names ‘was an effort that took years to achieve.’ Fisher said two offensive place names were replaced with names that enriched Oregon’s Black history.
The new names replace ones considered a racial slur and offensive to Black people. The renaming was a combined effort of the Oregon Geographic Names Board, assisted by the U.S. Forest Service and Bruce Fisher.
Triple Nickles Creek and Jack Creek are the latest in a series of renaming campaigns by the Oregon Black Pioneers that, together with other organizations, in 2020 renamed a Jackson County peak as the Ben Johnson Mountain after an early Black settler.
Two years later, the groups renamed a Douglas County ridge after Malvin Brown, a Triple Nickles smokejumper.