Final approval granted for renaming Mason County sites for Black pioneers

Two sites in Mason County have been renamed to honor Black pioneers in the region after the state Board of Natural Resources offered formal approval Tuesday.

The proposal to rename a wetland and a lake after Kitsap County pioneers Rodney White and Nathaniel Sargent, respectively, was introduced last October and adopted in January by the Washington State Committee on Geographic Names. The approval by the Board of Natural Resources, which acts as the state's Board on Geographic Names, was the final vote required to make the new names official in state records.

"We're doing this corrective history, healing our history and our land," Akuyea Karen Vargas, a leader of the Bremerton-based Living Arts Cultural Heritage Project, which petitioned the state for renaming the slough, said after the announcement.  "This is something my ancestors didn't get to see, after their blood, sweat and tears went into that land... by dealing with truth and reconciliation our history is transformed, and our community can be transformed."

Vargas has also been part of the effort to create physical markers that recognize the pioneers, like the restoration of Sargent's grave in the Seabeck Cemetery. The Living Arts Cultural Heritage Project worked with the state committee on geographic names and lobbied lawmakers in support, including U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, congressman for the state's Sixth District.

“The stories of Rodney White and Nathaniel Sargent are important. They made positive impacts on their communities, but they are not widely known,” Kilmer said in a statement this week. “I’m proud to have supported this effort because renaming these locations in Mason County recognizes their contributions and impacts that might have been forgotten due to the color of their skin.”

As previously reported, Nathaniel Sargent Lake will now be the official name of Grass Lake, a 10.5-acre body of water north of Tahuya that had been known as Negro Slough, and a racial slur prior to that, until an official name change in the 1990s. Sargent was a Black man born into slavery in Kentucky, who eventually moved to Kitsap and ranched 248 acres. He was elected justice of the peace in 1894 and died in 1954.

Also, an 18-acre Mason County wetland that was referred to by a racial slur on maps decades ago will be known as the Rodney White Slough. White, a former slave, is believed to have arrived in Mason County in 1890 and went on to farm and build roads in the Tahuya River Valley, and homesteaded at the site of the wetland. He died in 1913.

More:A Tahuya slough, once named for the N-word, was farmed by Black pioneer born into slavery

“The legacy of Black homesteaders is an important aspect of Washington’s history and helped shape the state we live in today,” Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz said in a statement released after the vote. “I am thrilled that the contributions that Rodney White and Nathaniel Sargent made to the communities of the Kitsap Peninsula will be honored with the renaming of these features.”

Kitsap Sun archives were used in reporting this story.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Approval granted for renaming Mason County sites for Black pioneers