Nearly 18 months after Swastika Lake in the Snowy Range mountains west of Laramie, Wyoming, had its name changed to Knight Lake, there’s controversy over whether changing the name was the right move.
The lake’s name was officially changed to Knight Lake in January 2024, Elisabeth Hernandez, executive director of the Wyoming Board on Geographic Names, told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.
No one seems to know for sure why or when it was named Swastika Lake in the first place.
It was renamed in honor of renowned University of Wyoming geologist and paleontologist Samuel Howell Knight.
The lake is in the Medicine Bow National Forest.
An inquiry sent to the Forest Service whether “Swastika Lake” still appears on official Forest Service maps was not answered by the time of publication.
As of Friday, the online map service Mapcarta still listed it as “Swastika Lake.”
Kim Viner, a member of the Albany County Historical Society and a sixth-generation Laramie native, told Cowboy State Daily on Friday that he was unsure whether the name change had been reflected on maps.
He added that map updates can sometimes take a few years.
Erasing History?
During the debate over the name change, the majority opinion was that the name “Swastika” was inappropriate, because the swastika was the primary symbol of the Third Reich in Nazi Germany.
However, dissenters argued that the history of the swastika symbol goes back roughly 10,000 years – long before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seized power in Germany and started World War II.
So, changing the lake’s name undermined opportunities to teach about the deeper history of the symbol, and how the Nazis hijacked it, dissenters argued.
Albany County Commission Chairwoman Terri Jones cast the dissenting vote in the commission’s 2-1 decision favoring the name change in June 2023.
On Friday, she told Cowboy State Daily that she still stands behind her dissent.
“I think the lake’s name should have never been changed,” she said.
“I think there should be a sign up there, telling what the word ‘Swastika’ actually means,” Jones added.
Viner said changing the name to Knight Lake was the right thing to do.
Despite its past as a sacred symbol for many cultures, the Swastika was forever blighted by the Nazis, he said.
Native American tribes that previously used it as a sacred symbol disavowed the Swastika after World War II, so it makes sense for Albany County to do the same, he said.
Outside Influence
Jones said part of the reason she opposed the name change is because it was prompted by an outside influence, “a woman from California.”
Viner confirmed that a woman from California brought the matter to the historical society’s attention and suggested changing the name.
As Viner recalled, the woman suggested renaming it “Fortune Lake.”
“We (the historical society) wanted it named for a prominent Albany County person,” and settled on Knight before bringing the proposal before the Albany County Commission, he said.
Jones said she opposed the name change then, and opposes it now, not out of antisemitism, or admiration for Nazis.
Instead, she believes the changing of the name shied away from history, and educational opportunities.
The swastika was originally a symbol for peace, love, hope and other positive attributes, she said.
The symbol has positive connotations in Perian and Indian religions, such as Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
The Nazis coopted the swastika to try making themselves look like “the good guys,” Jones said.
Keeping the lake’s original name would have provide an opportunity to teach people how evil forces sometimes hijack and twist positive, sacred symbols, she said.
Viner said the swastika’s modern association with the Nazis negates any possible value of keeping the name on the lake, or anything else in Albany County.
He noted that before World War II, a local store used the swastika, and an Albany County Ranch used it as a cattle brand – but they ditched it after the war.
Murky Past
Despite the controversy it stirred, Knight Lake/formerly Swastika Lake, isn’t particularly impressive, Viner said.
It’s remote, difficult to access and reportedly doesn’t have and fish in it, he said.
The lake’s past is also murky, he said.
Despite considerable digging into old newspapers and other local records, the historical society was unable to determine when or why the lake was given the Swastika name, Viner said.
Laramie resident and avid outdoorswoman Amber Travsky told Cowboy State Daily that she visited the lake years ago, “when I took it upon myself to explore all of the Snowy Range.”
She was baffled by the name Swastika Lake.
“I thought, ‘Why would somebody name a lake that?’ I figured maybe the lake is in the shape of a Swastika. But I got there and saw that it’s not shaped like that at all,” she said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
