The U.S. Board on Geographic Names made it official Thursday with a unanimous vote: Squaw Mountain in Clear Creek County is now Mestaa’?hehe Mountain.

The vote ends a four-year effort to remove the old name, offensive to Native Americans as some view it is an English version of a Algonquin word for female genitalia. In October, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo and the nation’s first Native American cabinet official, ordered the word “squaw” removed from all federal lands. 

Mestaa’?hehe, also known as “Owl Woman,” was a Southern Cheyenne leader and wife of William Bent. According to the proposal submitted by proponent Teanna Limpy, the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Owl Woman “helped negotiate trade between the many groups who traded at Bent’s Fort, and helped maintain good relations between the white people and the Native people.”

It’s the first name change recommended by Colorado’s Geographic Naming Advisory Board, a change they voted in favor of on Sept. 17. Clear Creek County commissioners also signed off on the change.

The Colorado board’s recommendation went to Gov. Jared Polis for his approval. However, Polis told the board in October that he initially planned to reject the recommendation because the name is too hard to pronounce. He said that would cause people to refer to it by its old name. 

That drew pushback from Native Americans, including Danielle SeeWalker, co-chair of the Denver American Indian Commission. 

“There’s a reason why our languages are now going extinct. And it’s because of this exact same thing,” she told Indian Country Today. “There’s non-Native people in positions of power that are not wanting to use our languages because they can’t pronounce them. It’s hard to spell it.”

Polis decided, however, to forward the recommendation to the federal board, which had been pushing Colorado to resolve the issue.

Limpy told the Mestaa’?hehe Coalition Thursday: “I am just wholeheartedly appreciative of the overwhelming support from all of the allies who rallied around this grassroots effort to change the name from S* Mountain. This goes to show that there nothing we cannot achieve if we think with our own hearts and always remember who we are doing this for. A derogatory name that is meant to diminish the sacredness and power of our women is no more.”

The mountain is located in the Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests near Mount Evans. According to the federal board, “there are two other summits named Squaw Mountain, 70 miles to the south-southeast and 130 miles to the northwest. Three streams named Squaw Creek are located between 30 and 60 miles to the west. Within Colorado, there are 36 features, both natural and man-made, that contain the word “squaw.”

The mountain, however, still contains reminders of the previous name: to get to the trailhead to hike up Mestaa’?hehe Mountain, you have to drive up Squaw Pass Road.