Local group baffled by Negro Mountain’s missing signage in Md.
What started out as a wholesome commitment by a group of Pittsburghers to be stewards of a Maryland picnic area has been insulted by a perplexing response from the Maryland Department of Transportation’s State Highway Administration.
The first sign of trouble was actually the absence of a sign, the one that, last October, read “Negro Mountain, Elev. 2,875” beside a picnic area in Garrett County. It had been there for years.
A long ridge of the Allegheny Mountains, Negro Mountain stretches 30 miles from Deep Creek Lake in Maryland, north to the Casselman River in Pennsylvania. Mount Davis, Pennsylvania’s highest elevation, is in the chain.
The highest point along the National Road, U.S. Route 40, was named Negro Mountain to honor a black frontiersman named Nemesis who died to save the lives of the rest of his party, including a
colonel for whom he was described as a “body servant” during the French and Indian War.
Last year, the Pittsburgh chapter of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History decided to honor the man and the mountain by adopting that part of the highway — the Negro Mountain picnic area — and got Maryland’s blessing, and a small Adopt-a-Highway sign that recognizes their chapter. The chapter is named after the late Edna McKenzie, a local educator, journalist and human rights activist who died in 2005.
On the drive to Negro Mountain one recent Saturday, the local group’s president, Ron Saunders, remarked that, probably, no other chapter’s members drive two hours to take care of a site. On that morning, six members made the trip. The chapter has 30 members.
“Those are our mountains up there,” Mr. Saunders said as the group made its way along Route 219, passing numerous Amish and Mennonite farms and households participating in the National Road Annual Yard Sale.
At the picnic site, a clearing in a forest with giant rocks, rhododendron and fiddlehead ferns, everyone noticed that the sign was gone. They noted that a second picnic table had been added. They cleaned debris out of stone fireplaces.
There wasn’t much litter. It didn’t fill one large plastic bag. The sacrifice had been a long drive on a blustery day.
“I wonder when they’ll put the sign back,” chapter member Ann Mason said.
When finished, the group returned two orange cones to the Maryland DOT location, where they noticed two highway signs that read “Negro Mountain, Elev. 2,740,” propped against a shed. They speculated that the signs were down for repair or to be replaced. Some of the letters were loose.
Back in Pittsburgh, Mr. Saunders inquired of the Maryland DOT and got an email back that stated: “I have been told that MDOT SHA Headquarters made the determination that the sign was not necessary for the safe function of the highway.”
Who would argue that a locator sign, with elevation, would ever have been considered necessary for safety any more than the a “Welcome to Maryland” sign is necessary for safety?
“The sign has been up there for years,” Mr. Saunders said, wondering about the real reason.
A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette inquiry elicited an email from spokesman Charlie Gischlar that stated that the agency “made the determination that the sign was not necessary for the safe function of the roadway. In total, four highway signs were removed (two on U.S. 40 and two on Interstate 68).”
To follow-up questions, he confirmed that all four signs were Negro Mountain signs. Asked to explain the puzzling reason, he clarified, stating that “the signs in question are categorized as general information signs and are not mandated or required to be in place.”
He did not reply to the follow-up question “Why were they were removed?”
Could it be Maryland officials suddenly fear possible controversy over having the word “Negro” on a sign? And does that have anything to do with the chapter’s stewardship efforts? Chapter members wonder.
Chapter member Marlene Bransom suspects the sign’s removal is part of the movement that includes removing Confederate symbols.
“I don’t know who is being sensitive or if someone is under pressure, not caring to know the history,” she said. “The word Negro is still in use by organizations founded before it went out of use. Something happened that we don’t know about. Something’s not right.”
There have been decades of efforts to get rid of the word, if not the sign.
The Johnstown TribuneDemocrat reported in 1994 that a retired McKeesport steelworker suggested the name Black Hero Mountain instead. In 2007, Pennsylvania Rep. Rosita Youngblood, D-Philadelphia, began a years-long effort to get the name changed.
“Although the term’Negro’ may not be seen by some commonwealth residents as a derogatory term, it’s outdated,” she stated on her website. “And the fact remains that the hero of this battle had a name — Nemesis.”
In 2011, Maryland state Sen. Lisa Gladden of Baltimore suggested Nemesis as a better name and introduced a bill with eight cosponsors to get it changed.
In 2015, Ms. Youngblood and Pennsylvania Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, co-introduced a resolution requesting a name change by the federal government.
Each effort to change the name has failed to pass muster in western Maryland, where public officials and others have defended their history in news reports over the years.
Mr. Saunders said the naming was an honor long ago, and his group wants to honor Nemesis and the place where he died.
“We want to honor the positive aspect of it,” he said. The group’s mission is “to promote, research, preserve, interpret and disseminate information about black life, history and culture.”
After a 2015 visit, his first, Mr. Saunders said he called Maryland DOT to ask the state to enhance the picnic area. His contact suggested that the chapter adopt it, and with that came a two-year commitment of four annual trips to remove litter. The first trip was in October.
“It is far from Pittsburgh,” Mr. Saunders said, “but I like the challenge. It is our hope that the Negro Mountain sign will be returned … as a fitting tribute on the highest point atop the National Road.”
Asked if the group’s commitment remains steadfast, he replied, “As African Americans commemorate 400 years of perseverance (1619-2019), we are not easily discouraged. We will make a joint decision on which course of action we shall proceed with next.”