The chapter of the Ice Age Trail Alliance for Polk and Burnett counties has a new name: it’s now the Trap Rock chapter.

The chapter’s membership voted to change the name at its Jan. 18 annual meeting at Interstate State Park in St. Croix Falls.  Chapter members maintain all 62 miles of the trail in the two counties.

The new name was chosen by members in recognition of the basaltic rock deposits that are mined at Dresser and Iver’s Mountain in Polk County. The rock is crushed for use in road construction and has a variety of other uses in landscaping, drainage systems, shingle construction and for railroad ballast. Traprock Trekker is the name that the chapter long has used to recognize people who hike all 62 miles in the two counties. 

The chapter meeting first voted 25-3 to drop the Indianhead chapter name that it has used since its founding in the 1990s. Trap Rock was the top vote-getter after three rounds of voting among a list of nine nominated names, with St. Croix and Western Terminus as top runners up.

The impetus for changing the name began with a proposal by members Jeff Peterson and Barb Katt made at the chapter’s annual meeting a year earlier.  They and other supporters of a change suggested that the previous Indianhead name was becoming dated as more local institutions that once used it have dropped the term in deference to modern sensibilities about use of native American nicknames.  Research found evidence of racist caricatures that had been used in the marketing of the Indianhead tourism designation employed since the 1930s for 13 northwestern Wisconsin counties.

Moreover, the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council, comprised of 11 tribal governments, called in 1999 for the elimination of American Indian logos, mascots and nicknames. The council includes the northwest area’s St. Croix Chippewa community of Indians, headquartered near Hertel.