A Colorado city council recently voted (unanimously) to
change the name of a subdivision called “Swastika Acres” to “Old Cherry Hills.”
I’m guessing this was probably one of the easier votes council members ever had
to cast. I am firmly against renaming places and things and eviscerating
history, but, in this case, I might have made an exception myself. Even though
the subdivision had no connection whatsoever to Nazis or Naziism and was named
after the Denver
Land Swastika Company that divvied up area land decades before the Third
Reich came into being. State law previously required approval of 100 percent of
the landowners involved to change a municipal name such as this, but the city
council obtained an ordinance requiring only 51 percent approval. Whew.
In the
days since the town of Cherry Hills Village renamed its subdivision, many other
towns, localities, places and entities have followed suit. Anal Wart,
Massachusetts, Snot-eater Shores, California, Maggot Town, Maryland and Earwig
Hills, Alabama have all been given new monikers, as has Syphilis Junction, New
Mexico. The “Rotting Fish Community Pool” in Siren, Wisconsin has been renamed the
“Siren Wisconsin Community Pool.” Additionally, the “Slaughterhouse Grill” in
Omaha, Nebraska has been reborn as the “Omaha Steak House” and the “Dachau View
Apartments” in Syracuse, New York have been rechristened “The Suites at Terrace
gardens.”
This is
considered to be the most rapid period of relabeling since 1981, when three
cities in the U.S. switched the name of their primary thoroughfares from “Slain
Street” to “Main Street” in the same month that Hellhole, Illinois became Grand
View, Illinois and Chrysler rebranded its “KKK-car” as simply the “K-car.”
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