Park County commissioners revoked a previous motion to name a summit after Paul Jackson Pollock after finding out the landmark was on private property.

Michigan artist Greg Constantine proposed that a summit, located between Paint Creek and Blaine Creek, be named Mount Pollock after the famed American painter.

Pollock, who was born in Cody, is best known for his abstract artwork. 

“The reason I campaigned for this was that in 2016, I drove past this mountain…and I stopped and I took a couple of pictures of it,” Constantine said. “I came back to my studio, I enlarged [the photos] and I noticed some things about that stratified red rock that really appealed to me. So I immediately set to making some paintings of it.”

After painting more than 35 interpretive paintings of the summit, Constantine needed a name for his collection of paintings. He reached out to a geologist at Casper College and gave him the photos and location of the summit. Unfortunately, the summit didn’t have a name. That’s when Constantine decided to apply to name the summit through the U.S. Board of Geographic Names (BGN).

At a previous meeting, Park County commissioners motioned to write a letter to the BGN in favor of naming the summit after the historic artist. However, they decided to repeal that motion on April 19.

“One of the things that came to light, at least to me…was that the [United States Geological Survey] does not verify land ownership when they make these recommendations and have no consideration for whether the land is government owned or privately owned,” Chairman Dossie Overfield said. “I did not realize that the land was privately owned and that the landowners had not been contacted in any way shape or form about this request.

“That makes a difference to me in how that’s handled,” Overfield continued. “With that new information, that’s why I wanted to draw back.”

After hearing concerns from the public, the commission decided naming the summit could cause unwanted tourist traffic on private property, something commissioners wanted to avoid. 

The Commission’s decision wasn’t supported by everyone.

Dewey Vanderhoff of Cody attended the meeting in favor of renaming the summit.

“I wanna say this on the record, I’m not a fan of Jackson Pollock’s art,” Vanderhoff said. “What I’m a fan of is that he, in the 20th century, was a titan of the art world. And yet, you would not know…coming in on an airplane in Cody or coming in on a road trip, that he was born
5, 6 miles north of [Cody] on a ranch. I think this is an interesting idea, but I only consider it to be one of several things around here that [should] have Jackson Pollock’s brand on it.”

Constantine and Vanderhoff wrote to the landowners hoping to receive feedback about naming the summit, but they haven’t yet received a reply.

Renaming the summit in honor of Pollock is still undecided, but the consensus remains the artist should receive some recognition in the town of Cody. 

“I agree that to recognize him being from here…is fine, if it was at the airport or somewhere else in the city of Cody,” Overfield said. “But my concern is that we are potentially drawing people because of that to private land and I don’t want to be in on that.”