The unnamed peak in question below, as seen from my property at sunset of the winter solstice on Saturday December 21, 2024.
A few days ago, someone on social media posted about visiting a promontory in Utah named “Mollie’s Nipple”. Which one, you might ask? Because there are a minimum of five and more likely seven and potentially as many as eleven Utah hills named “Mollie’s Nipple/Molly’s Nipple”. Pray tell, which of Mollie’s numerous nipples were you at? Turns out the poster was at the one on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. But it could be any one of several others.
This begs the following set of questions in my brain: Who was Mollie/Molly, and why are her nipples consecrated in Utah geography to a ludicrous extent? Was she a dog perhaps, having 6 to 12 nipples, each requiring cartographic recognition? Where are the commemorative names of other women’s mammary tissues, manifested in stone? Do men get any honorifics in the nippular department? (Spoiler: Nope. It’s a female only club, it seems, although I suspect that it is almost entirely men making the designations and we all know how sus it is for straight men to think about other men’s nipples.)
Time for some internet research. It turns out that there are actually answers to some of these questions. Most of the Utah peaks are attributed to a pioneer named John Kitchen, an early white Mormon immigrant into the state, who named these edifices of sandstone, limestone, shale, or basalt after his appreciation of his bride. We all know her name by now. While Molly/-ie got the most love in this regard, there are multiple other features named for Mary, Fern, Sadie, Susie, Elsie, and Janie – all of them in Utah or in adjacent Idaho. There are numerous nipplesque peaks elsewhere in the USA, the vast majority of them Out West. Surprisingly there is one named for Dan in Wyoming. Hey Cowboy! Guess I was wrong about that female-only club assessment earlier, but it only proves that Black Swan events do occur, and they don’t really disprove the rule….
It goes on. Turns out that humanity has been naming geological features of all sorts for breasts and nipples for thousands of years, possibly tens of thousands, ever since abstract thinking and representational language evolved in primates. Wikipedia has a long list of these so feel free to check that out if you care. Many of these mammary-themed rocks, buttes, hills, and mountains are associated with cultural perceptions of religious deities and fertility, legends of creation, and/or mother earth. In Utah it’s uniquely focused on a handful of individual Mormon women, which bucks the global trend otherwise.
There is a peak nearby me, officially unnamed on US Geological Survey maps AFAIK, that I have taken to calling “Chewtoy Peak”. I did this because I think it would be fun to name a peak and to NOT call it “Nipple Something Or Other”. I made this choice roughly 25 years ago when I moved here because even then, I was a bit annoyed with the trend of naming every other peak Nipple This and Nipple That. I’d already seen Mollie’s Nipple in Utah several times while perusing maps of the state and found the repetition grating and uncreative. So I chose “Chewtoy Peak” because the ragged top resembled something that a cosmic domestic pet might have spent time gnawing on. Not that you can’t also gnaw on the other things, but I think Mollie might object to the level of roughness required to make the summit look so weatherbeaten. I wanted to be a bit different in my nomenclature, even if it’s completely unofficial and not remotely recognized by the USGS. But I believe that the USGS will eventually accept local naming as valid on future maps as long as it has a history of use and acceptance my the local population, and no prior known name. This shall be my legacy!
Thus begins my campaign to get this local foothill of the larger Hualapai Mountain Range I live at the base of named “Chewtoy Peak”. Under no circumstances should anyone ever refer to it as “Nipple Peak”, or worst of all “Jan’s Nipple”. I will fight you on this.
