As we were moving from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania to our small farm in the Bluegrass State, our 624 mile trip took us down Interstate 68 in Maryland. Along that most scenic of Interstate highways, the Old Line State maintains a few elevation signs near the tops of mountains, like Keyser’s Ridge at 2,880 feet, and Meadow Mountain, the elevation of which I do not remember. They were interesting, in passing, but not so interesting that I felt the need to research them.
Negro Mountain sign on I-68 in Maryland; the sign has been removed,
But there was one I did research, because of its seemingly unusual name: Negro Mountain. From The Baltimore Sun:
October 3, 2020 | 3:01 AM EDT
PITTSBURGH — An Allegheny Mountain ridge stretching some 30 miles from the Casselman River in southern Somerset County to Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland has been the focus of controversy as attempts continue to change a name dating to the French and Indian War.
The name in question: Negro Mountain.
The name has been used consistently at least since 1841, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Negro Ridge was cited in the Pennsylvania Senate Journal in 1842.
“If a name is offensive to people — remove it,” said James Saku, a geography professor and coordinator of African American Studies at Frostburg State University in Maryland, located about 20 miles east of the site.
There’s more at the original, but I have to ask: why is the word that the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, used to refer to his race, offensive?
Why was the mountain so named? The most widely accepted, but still not proven, story is that a free black man believed to have been named Nemesis, or possibly Goliath, the “body servant” of Col. Thomas Cresap, was killed in 1756 in a fierce battle with Indians during the French and Indian War.
Cresap, an English-born frontiersman and land speculator in Maryland and Pennsylvania, named the mountain in honor of Nemesis’ race, according to an account from the Western Maryland Historic Library, part of the Western Maryland Regional Library in Hagerstown.
That account also was published in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette on June 17, 1756. Another account offers a different version, saying the man died while fighting with a Capt. Friend.
Lynn Bowman, an adjunct associate professor of English and speech at Allegany College of Maryland, has a darker version. She claimed that the west side of the mountain there was an area called [culturally inappropriate slang term derived from Negro] Hollow where black people were lynched, though that would seem to post-date the name of the mountain.
Well, who can know, but it wouldn’t have made much sense to name the mountain for Nemesis’ race if the second account is the true one.
But one thing is certain: I would never have heard of Nemesis, or Goliath if that was what he was called, had the mountain been named Nemesis Mountain; it would have held no interest to me. I also did not know that there were free black men on the frontier at the time; now, I do.
Alas Political correctness has struck!
By Teresa McMinn | November 3, 2019
CUMBERLAND — Kenneth Lloyd wants to buy the Negro Mountain signs, which disappeared from Garrett County roads earlier this year, and install them in his front yard.
Negro Mountain occupies a 30-mile stretch of the Alleghenies from Deep Creek Lake north to the Casselman River in Pennsylvania.
The ridge in Garrett County reaches 3,075 feet at its peak, and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, marks the highest point in the state.
The Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration earlier this year removed four Negro Mountain signs — two from Interstate 68 and two from U.S. Alternate Route 40.
“I’m highly upset,” Lloyd, a Philadelphia native who now lives in Grantsville, said of the missing signs.
“That’s a part of the history of this country,” said Lloyd, who served in the U.S. Marines from 1979 to 1986 and now works as a truck driver. “Learn from it.”
According to Lora Rakowski, acting director of the state highway agency’s office of communications, the removal of the signs cost $212 in staff time.
“We know this issue involves an important piece of local history,” she said via email. “We also know that some people feel the signage was inappropriate.”
There is some dispute about the man’s name; it was not given in the contemporaneous stories. What is given is that he was a free black man, a frontiersman, who fought and died on that mountain. But his deeds, even if perhaps somewhat legendary, honor him, but, due to the political correctness of the #woke, fewer people will know of it.
And so the signs are gone. There will be no future travelers on I-68 in Garrett County, Maryland, who will see the odd sign, and decide to Google search for it, and what little remains of Nemesis’ memory will fade away.
