A view of Lake Tahoe from the east shore in Nevada. Photo from © 2006 Sascha Brück

The Nevada State Board on Geographic Names indefinitely tabled a proposal to name a Lake Tahoe site for Mark Twain due to objections from the Washoe Tribe.

Twain held racist views about Native people, tribal cultural resources officer Darrel Cruz said. The author, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, once used a derogatory term to describe the Washoe people.

“Samuel Clemens had racist views on the native people of this country and has captured those views in his literature,” Cruz wrote in a letter to the board, the Associated Press reported. “Therefore, we cannot support the notion of giving a place name in Lake Tahoe to Samuel Clemens.”

Tahoe comes from a Washoe word that means lake. It's the center of the Washoe world.

Get the Story:
Racism claim dooms bid to honor Mark Twain in NV (AP 5/18)
Lake Tahoe: Twain called it the ‘fairest picture the whole world affords’ (The Las Vegas Review-Journal 1/5)