By Jason Stuart
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
Those looking for a ‘quiet’ spot to get away from it all and immerse themselves in nature now have an aptly named spot to do so in the rugged backcountry of Makoshika State Park.
After tallying all the votes, the public has overwhelmingly chosen Inila Lake as the name for the new lake which was created in Makoshika a few years ago when a landslide created a natural rock and earth dam across the mouth of a deep ravine.
The word Inila (pronounced ee-nee-lah) means “quiet” in the Lakota language, from which the park’s name is also taken. The name was submitted by Sarah Peterson of Miles City.
Makoshika manager Chris Dantic officially announced the winning lake name at the annual Buzzard Day event in the park on Saturday. The other four finalists the public voted on were Hidden Lake, Lake Makoshika, Lake Maka and Minoshika.
With the lake now officially named, the next step for Montana State Parks will be to better educate the public about its existence and ultimately to devise a means of providing public access to it.
Dantic said on Monday that the first thing State Parks wants to do is get an interpretive sign up in the park with the lake’s new name and an interpretive explanation about its creation. He said that is a “high priority” and something he hopes to see accomplished by the end of this summer season.
“We definitely want to get a sign,” Dantic said.
Getting a trail built to the lake is a longer-term proposition, Dantic said. While it is definitely something State Parks wants to do, he said that is currently a lower priority. Building an improved, marked trail to the lake will be something of a challenge, Dantic added, noting that the path to get there “is really steep” and that park staff will “have their work cut out for them” to try and build a trail to the lake.
“We’ll take a look maybe in the off-season about how we can get a trail down to the water,” Dantic said.
The lake should begin appearing on official park maps before too much longer as well, Dantic noted. He said park ranger Tom Shoush is constantly working on the park maps and “always updating them,” so he thinks they should have the lake mapped out to the point of being able to include it on official park maps by the end of the summer, though he noted the new maps with the lake marked on them probably won’t be available until 2018.
As for how the lake naming contest played out, Dantic said he was very pleased with how the entire process went, and especially with the public’s engagement with it. A total of 558 name suggestions rolled in during the course of the contest, coming from all across Montana and even from all over the country.
“I thought it was good,” Dantic said of the naming contest. “I learned a lot. I learned you have to be dead for five years before you can use a (person’s) name, so I guess they won’t be naming anything after me anytime soon.”
Reach Jason Stuart at rrreporter@rangerreview.com.