Vegas conservative wants to make a presidential peak out of a Belgian’s mountain

If Chuck Muth has his way, Las Vegas residents will see the sun rise over Mount Reagan each and every morning in America.

The conservative activist is leading a push to have the tallest peak on the valley’s eastern skyline named in honor of the 40th president.

Frenchman Mountain would still be called Frenchman Mountain, but its as-yet-unnamed summit would become Mount Reagan.

Muth will make his pitch Tuesday morning before an obscure panel known as the Nevada State Board on Geographic Names.

If board members endorse the idea, it goes to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names for final approval.

Muth said 12 presidents have mountains in the United States named for them. Even Canada has a couple of mountains named for American presidents.

The current effort in Nevada is an offshoot of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which national conservative leader Grover Norquist launched in 1997 in hopes of plastering the president’s name on as many landmarks as possible.

It’s also personal for Muth, who said Reagan was a profound influence on his own political views and activism.

“I think he was the greatest president, certainly of our generation,” he said.

Muth described Tuesday’s meeting in Dayton as the first official hearing in the process. He doesn’t expect a final decision from the state board until later this year.

And even if the state board approves it, “it’s not a slam dunk” that the national board will go along, Muth said.

Already, the idea is meeting some resistance from people who don’t think Reagan is worthy even of a treeless, 4,052-foot bump dotted with communication towers.

Muth said the board has received several letters of opposition, including one from “ultra-liberal” Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani.

While she laughed at Muth’s label, Giunchigliani insists her objection has nothing to do with politics. She just prefers to see local features named after people with a direct connection to them.

“There really is no nexus to Nevada with Ronald Reagan,” Giunchigliani said. “It’s time we recognized our own history, what little of it there is.”

Muth counters that local connections are not required for people of national or international significance, but Reagan had links to both Las Vegas and Nevada as a whole.

Reagan the politician signed important interstate agreements to protect Lake Tahoe and maintianed a close friendship with Nevada Gov. Paul Laxalt, Muth said. Reagan the actor emceed a variety show on the Strip in 1954 and starred in a 1943 propaganda film called “The Rear Gunner” that was filmed at Nellis Air Force Base.

The push to name a Nevada mountain for the Gipper began in 2009 with a much loftier goal in mind.

Muth said the group’s original target was Boundary Peak, Nevada’s highest point at 13,146 feet.

The snow-capped mountain seemed to have everything going for it — majestic stature, close proximity to Reagan’s home state of California and a current generic name surely no one would miss.

That’s when Muth learned perhaps the single-most important rule of the name game: People don’t like change.

Even in Esmeralda County, a spiritual rallying point for Reagan’s small government ideals, officials said they didn’t care to see a new name on their old mountain.

After that, Muth and company set their sights on finding a mountain that hadn’t been named yet, but that wasn’t any easier. When a search for significant-but-anonymous peaks in the Spring Mountains came up empty, the effort was put on hold.

As it turned out, the answer was right outside Muth’s backdoor. He lives about a block away from the foot of Frenchman, but he never considered it until his then-12-year-old daughter pointed out that most people don’t even call the mountain by its proper name.

Even long-time valley residents — Giunchigliani included — frequently refer to it as Sunrise Mountain, which is actually about three miles north and almost 700 feet lower.

Then there is this: The original Frenchman wasn’t even French. He was a Belgian named Pete Watalet, who started a mine on the mountain in 1912 as part of a stock-promotion scheme.

“He was Belgian gold mine scam artist,” Muth said with a laugh.

Naming the top of the mountain for Reagan might just make it a tourist draw, he said.

“Everyone can see it from almost anywhere in the valley,” including tens of millions of visitors from across the country and around the world.

Plus, Muth added, “you can actually hike to the top of it.”

It’s a steep, shadeless slog, but the reward is a panoramic view of Las Vegas in one direction and Lake Mead in the other.

Just try to avoid the area in a heavy downpour. Stormwater doesn’t trickle down the mountain, no matter what you call it.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.