Over the past few years I have noticed a disturbing trend in the Chieftain, where our beautiful mountains are being referred to as the Eagle Cap Mountains or Eagle Caps, rather than their proper name, the WALLOWA MOUNTAINS.

The most recent example was in the June 2 edition, Northeast Oregon Artisans insert, where one of the advertisers refers the them as the Eagle Cap Mountain Range. In the May 26 edition of the Chieftain the new district ranger called them the Eagle Cap Mountains even though the introductory paragraph of the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest home page contains the following sentence, “The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest includes 2.3 million acres of public lands extending from the Blue Mountains and rugged WALLOWA MOUNTAINS down to the spectacular canyon country of the Snake River.” In addition, on the same page, the very office he will work out of is called the WALLOWA MOUNTAIN OFFICE.

Eagle Cap is a single peak located in the Wallowa Mountains and the Eagle Cap Wilderness lies in the heart of the Wallowa Mountains, but the mountains are still correctly know as the WALLOWA MOUNTAINS. In the future let’s try to refer to them as such.

Mike Crawford

Troy