Utah has dozens of tall, nameless mountain peaks. However, now it has one less. The U.S. Board of Geographic Names' Domestic Names Committee has agreed to name an 8,626-foot peak in the Wellsville Mountains, straddling Box Elder and Cache counties, after Bob Stewart, an early agricultural extension agent in the area.
Meeting in Salt Lake City's Red Lion Hotel last week for a portion of their 568th gathering, the Names Committee unanimously voted to approve the name, submitted by John Stewart to commemorate his late father's accom-plish-ments.The peak is located a few hundred yards northeast of the Wellsville Cone in Cache County. The Wellsville Mountains are a steep wilderness area between Brigham City and Fielding.
Some concern was expressed over why another nameless peak in the area that's 338 feet higher wasn't given Stewart's name instead. But the selection was made because the lower peak has a trail to it and is considered more prominent from the Cache County side.
The original proposal made to the committee was to change the name of Box Elder Peak to Bob Stewart Peak. Box Elder is the highest summit in the Wellsville Mountains at 9,372 feet above sea level. However, the Utah Names Board denied that proposal because of local opposition to change the name that has existed for many years.
Bob Stewart was employed by the U.S. Forest Service as an adviser, and the Wellsville Mountains would have never become a wilderness area without his efforts to start a nonprofit group that purchased much of the overgrazed land in the area.
He was one of Utah's first three county extension agents, working in Box Elder County for 36 years to educate the public on conservation. Stewart was born in Wells-ville and lived in the area until his death in 1973. His parents were among the first pioneers to settle in the area.
A Stewart Pass runs along the ridge of the Wellsville Mountains, less than a mile from the new Bob Stewart Peak, but the origin of this name is unknown.
- The Names Committee also heard a Utah proposal to name the highest peak in Wasatch County Mount Cardwell - after H. Cardwell Clegg, who named many of the lakes in the Trial Lake area of the Uinta Mountains and worked for the Union Irrigation Co.
However, it is a policy of the Names Committee not to vote on a name just after a presentation by the public has been made. An official proposal will be made soon to the Utah Names Board, which will later approach the U.S. Names Board.
Wasatch County's 10,743-foot-high point is unnamed, and two of Clegg's daughters want to commemorate their father's work in the mountains. Clegg built many dams in the area and planted the first fish in many of the lakes there. He worked out of a summer cabin on Trial Lakes' west shore. He died in 1975 at the age of 84.
The nameless peak is located southeast of Bald Mountain, just off the Mirror Lake Highway.